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V 



PREFACE 

This collection of biographies and autobiographies of English 
men of letters has been prepared to serve various purposes. 

It is primarily designed to illustrate the varieties of biographical 
writing. To this end, it includes: first, extracts from notable 
autobiographies, among which are those of Lord Herbert of Cher- 
bury, Colley Gibber, Gibbon, and Ruskin; second, examples of 
the method and style of such famous biographers as Izaak Walton, 
Dr. Johnson, Boswell, Lockhart, Southey, Macaulay, and Garlyle; 
and third, many complete Lives from the Dictionary of National 
Biography which represent the work of the most accomplished of 
modern literary historians. 

In the first group, the selections of autobiography exemplify 
both formal and informal records of life and character. Here 
may be studied such types as the diary, the letter, the reminiscence, 
and the memoir. The attention of students should be called to 
the diversity of mood and style inherent in these types, and due to 
the moment of writing and the author's mental attitude. For 
the study of these differences, Pepys's Diary, Swift's Journal to 
Stella, Garlyle's Reminiscences, and Gibbon's Memoirs offer ex- 
cellent material. Furthermore, the manner and degree of self- 
revelation are to be considered. The coniparison of Lord Her- 
bert's vainglorious account of his prowess, or of Colley Gibber's 
naive avowal of vanity, with Ruskin's reverent narrative of his great 
awakening in Italy should prove highly interesting. 

When we turn to the second group, the examples of the work 
of famous biographers, we meet new phases of the art of recording 
men's lives. Now, the shrewdness with which the author has 
understood his hero, the justness with which he has interpreted' 
his character, the skill and spirit with which he has portrayed his 
actions, become matters of fundamental importance. Here, too. 



vi PREFACE 

are illustrated the various elements — narrative, dramatic, de- 
scriptive, and analytical — which combine to make good biography. 
Students should note the use of narrative in Lockhart's relation of 
the death of Scott, and the use of dialogue which is almost pure 
drama in Boswell's scene between Dr. Johnson and Wilkes. 
Bos well, again, offers a striking contrast to Izaak Walton in this 
same matter of dialogue. Where Bos well is most triumphant, 
Walton is least successful. The discourse of Sanderson in the 
tavern (see p. 165) lacks the "sweet persuasiveness of the living 
and naturally cadenced voice" which is never absent from the 
narrative parts of Walton's Lives. But in Boswell the voice of 
Johnson is indeed the vox humana. Finally, the analytical ele- 
ment, illustrated by the Character of Pope at the end of Johnson's 
Life of that poet, may be contrasted with the descriptive element 
in Macaulay's picturesque account of Fanny Burney's servitude 
at Court. 

The third group of brief, complete biographies of men whose 
lives and characters are interesting for their own sake leads to the 
statement of a second purpose of this book. 

It is expected, indeed, that a volume including not only selec- 
tions from famous biographies and autobiographies, but also a 
large number of Lives reprinted from the Dictionary of National 
Biography will be of service to both teachers and students of 
English Literature. To teachers such a collection will suggest 
ways of enlivening and humanizing the study of literature for their 
pupils. To students it will make available several of the best 
Lives in a great work not conveniently accessible to classes of even 
moderate size. In this practical way, it will furnish material which 
will enable them to study the relation of an author's life and his 
work. How close is the relation of life and work, students some- 
times forget. It is as unreasonable to deem a book exclusively an 
isolated entity as to deem it exclusively the embodiment of a move- 
ment. Books "do preserve as in a vial," said Milton, "the purest 
efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them." 
It was the realization of this human background of literature that 
' led Gibbon to say, " I may judge from the experience both of past 
and of the present times, that the public are always curious to know 
the men who have left behind them any image of their minds: 



PREFACE vii 

the most scanty accounts of such men are compiled with diligence, 
ajid perused with eagerness. ... If they be sincere, we seldom 
complain of the minuteness or prolixity of these personal me- 
morials"; and it led Dr. Johnson to declare, "The biographical 
part of literature is what I love most." 

The arrangement of the book deserves a word of explana- 
tion. It is fitting that Carlyle's energetic essay on Biography 
should stand as prologue to the collection, for this essay not 
only emphasizes the fact that "man is perennially interesting 
to man," but it insists upon the "worth that lies in Reality ^^ as the 
basis of all good biographical writing. In order to suggest various 
points of view from which the selections may be regarded, intro- 
ductory notes are prefixed to many of them. These notes contain 
a synopsis of the author's life when that is necessary to understand 
the selection, and short passages from the essays and letters 
of distinguished critics. Moreover, the selections in the first and 
second groups in the table of contents are arranged chronologically, 
and at the beginning of each extract is given the date of pubHcation 
or — if a considerable time elapsed between writing and publica- 
tion — the date of writing. By this means, one may trace not 
only the development of biographical methods, but the progress of 
English narrative style. 

Thanks are due to the following publishers for their permission 
to use extracts from their books : Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, 
Houghton Mifiiin Company, Harper and Brothers, The Macmillan 
Company, and Smith, Elder & Company. 

F. W. C. HERSEY. 

Harvard University, 
June 28, 1909. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Preface . . o 

BiOGEAPHY by Thomas Carlyle 

Chapters in Autobiography: 

Lord Herbert of Cherbury : The Fight with Sir John Ayres 

Samuel Pepys : Extracts from the Diary 

Jonathan Swift: 'Extracts from the Journal to Stella 

CoWeyCihhtx: " Talking of Hijnself' . 

Edward Gibbon : At Oxford 

My Early Love .... 

" The Decline and Fall of the Roman 
Thomas Carlyle : Life in London .... 
Charles Dickens : Llard Experiences in Boyhood . 
John Ruskin : The Campo Santo .... 
Robert Louis Stevenson : Learning to Write , 



Emp 



PAGE 
V 



i6 

23 
40 

53 
62 

71 

73 
80 
96 

"5 
127 



Selections from Famous Biographers: 

Izaak Walton: The Life of Dr. Robert Sanderson 
Samuel Johnson : The Life of Pdpe . . . . 

James Boswell : The Meeting of Dr. Johnson and Wilkes 
Robert Southey : The Death of Nelson .... 
John Gibson Lockhart : The Death of Scott . 
Thomas Babington Macaulay: Fanny Burney at Court. 
Thomas Carlyle : Torrijos ajid John Sterling . , . 
William Makepeace Thackeray : Oliver Goldsmith . 



Lives from the Dictionary of National Biography: 

Sir Walter Ralegh Sidney Lee 

Sir Philip Sidney Sidney Lee 

John Bunyan Edmund Venables 

Sir Richard Steele Austin Dobson 

Samuel Johnson Sir Leslie Stephen 

ix 



130 

182 
261 
272 
281 
292 
310 
318 



330 
373 
405 
425 
439 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Richard Brinsley Sheridan 


Fraser Rae 


473 


Charles Lamb .... 


. Alfred Ainger 


487 


Lord Byron . . . . 


Sir Leslie Stephen 


501 


Percy Bysshe Shelley 


Richard Garnett 


551 


Charles Dickens .... 


Sir Leslie Stephen 


569 


Robert Browning , . . . 


. Edmund Gosse 


595 


Robert Louis Stevenson 


. Sidney Colvin 


623 



REPRESENTATIVE BIOGRAPHIES 

OF 

ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS 



BIOGRAPHY 



THOMAS CARLYLE 



[First published in Fraser's Magazine, April, 1832. Critical and MiS' 
cdlaneous Essays.] 

Man's sociality of nature evinces itself, in spite of all that can 
be said, with abundant evidence by this one fact, were there no 
other: the unspeakable delight hef takes in Biography. It is 
written, ' The proper study of mankind is man ; ' to which study, 
let us candidly admit, he, by true or by false methods, applies 
himself, nothing loth. 'Man is perennially interesting to man; 
nay, if we look strictly to it, there is nothing else interesting.' 
How inexpressibly comfortable to know our fellow-creature; to 
see into him, understand his goings-forth, decipher the whole 
heart of his mystery: nay, not only to see into him, but even to 
see out of him, to view the world altogether as he views it; so 
that we can theoretically construe him, and could almost practi- 
cally personate him; and do now thoroughly discern both what 
manner of man he is, and what manner of thing he has got to 
work on and live on ! 

A scientific interest and a poetic one alike inspire us in this 
matter. A scientific : because every mortal has a Problem of 
Existence set before him, which, were it only, what for the most 
it is, the Problem of keeping soul and body together, must be to 
a certain extent original, unlike every other; and yet, at the same 
time, so like every other; like our own, therefore; instructive, 
moreover, since we also are indentured to live. A poetic interest 
still more: for precisely this same struggle of human Freewill 
against material Necessity, which every man's Life, by the mere 
circumstance that the man continues alive, will more or less vic- 
toriously exhibit, — is that which above all else, or rather inclu- 
sive of all else, calls the Sympathy of mortal hearts into action; 



2 BIOGRAPHY ■ 

and whether as acted, or as represented and written of, not only 
is Poetry, but is the sole Poetry possible. Borne onwards by 
which two all-embracing interests, may the earnest Lover of Biog- 
raphy expand himself on all sides, and indefinitely enrich him- 
self. Looking with the eyes of every new neighbour, he can dis- 
cern a new world different for each : feeling with the heart of 
every neighbour, he lives with every neighbour's Hfe, even as with 
his own. Of these millions of living men, each individual is a 
mirror to us ; a mirror both scientific and poetic ; or, if you will, 
both natural and magical ; — from which one would so gladly draw • 
aside the gauze veil; and, peering therein, discern the image of 
his own natural face and the supernatural secrets that propheti- 
cally lie under the same ! 

Observe, accordingly, to what extent, in the actual course of 
things, this business of Biography is practised and relished. Define 
to thyself, judicious Reader, the real significance of these phe- 
nomena, named Gossip, Egoism, Personal Narrative (miraculous 
or not). Scandal, Raillery, Slander, and such like; the sum- total 
of which (with some fractional addition of a better ingredient, 
generally too small to be noticeable) constitutes that other grand 
phenomenon still called ' Conversation.' Do they not mean 
wtioUy: Biography and Autobiography ? Not only in the com- 
mon speech of men; but fe all Art too, which is or should be 
the concentrated and conserved essence of what men can speak 
and show. Biography is almost the one thing needful. 

Even in the highest works of Art, our interest, as the critics 
complain, is too apt to be strongly or even mainly of a Biographic 
sort. In the Art, we can nowise forget the Artist: while looking 
on the Transfiguration, while studying the Iliad, we ever strive to 
figure to ourselves what spirit dwelt in Raphael; what a head was 
that of Homer, wherein, woven of Elysian fight and Tartarean 
gloom, that old world fashioned itself together, of which these 
written Greek characters are but a feeble though perennial copy. 
The Painter and the Singer are present to us; we partially and 
for the time become the very Painter and the very Singer, while 
we enjoy the Picture and the Song. Perhaps too, let the critic 
say what he will, this is the highest enjoyment, the clearest recog- 
nition, we can have of these. Art indeed is Art; yet Man also is 



THOMAS CARLYLE 3 

Man. Had the Transfiguration been painted without human 
hand; had it grown merely on the canvas, say by atmospheric 
influences, as lichen-pictures do on rocks, — it were a grand 
Picture doubtless; yet nothing hke so grand as the Picture, 
which, on opening our eyes, we everywhere in Heaven and in 
Earth see painted; and everywhere pass over with indifference, 
— because the Painter was not a Man. Think of this ; much Hes 
in it. The Vatican is great ; yet poor to Chimborazo or the Peak 
of Teneriffe : its dome is but a foolish Big-endian or Little-endian 
chip of an egg-shell, compared with that star-fretted Dome where 
Arcturus and Orion glance forever; which latter, notwithstand- 
ing, who looks at, save perhaps some necessitous stargazer bent 
to make Almanacs; some* thick-quilted watchman, to see what 
weather it will prove? The Biographic interest is wanting; no 
Michael Angelo was He who built that ' Temple of Immensity ; ' 
therefore do we, pitiful Littlenesses as we are, turn rather to won- 
der and to worship in the little toybox of a Temple built by our 
like. 

Still more decisively, still more exclusively does the Biographic 
interest manifest itself, as we descend into lower regions of spirit- 
ual communication; through the whole range of what is called 
Literature. Of History, for example, the most honoured, if not 
honourable species of composition, is not the whole purport Bio- 
graphic? 'History,' it has been said, 'is the essence of innumer- 
able Biographies.' Such, at least, it should be: whether it is, 
might admit of question. But, in any case, what hope have we 
in turning over those old interminable Chronicles, with their 
garrulities and insipidities; or still worse in patiently examining 
those modern Narrations, of the Philosophic kind, where ' Philos- 
ophy, teaching by Experience,' has to sit like owl on housetop, 
seeing nothing, understanding nothing, uttering only, with solem- 
nity enough, her perpetual most wearisome hoo-hoo : — what hope 
have we, except the for most part fallacious one of gaining some 
acquaintance with our fellow-creatures, though dead and vanished, 
yet dear to us; how they got along in those old days, suffering 
and doing; to what extent, and under what circumstances, they 
resisted the Devil and triumphed over him, or struck their colours 
to him, and were trodden under foot by him; how, in short, the 



4 BIOGRAPHY 

perennial Battle went, which men name Life, which we also in these 
new days, with indifferent fortune, have to fight, and must be- 
queath to our sons and grandsons to go on fighting, — till the En- 
emy one day be quite vanquished and abolished, or else the great 
Night sink and part the combatants; and thus, either by some 
Millennium, or some new Noah's Deluge, the Volume of Uni- 
versal History wind itself up ! Other hope, in studying such 
Books, we have none : and that it is a deceitful hope, who that has 
tried knows not ? A feast of widest Biographic insight is spread for 
us ; we enter full of hungry anticipations : alas, like so many other 
feasts, which Life invites us to, a mere Ossian's 'feast of shells,^ — 
the food and liquor being all emptied out and clean gone, and only 
the vacant dishes and deceitful emblems thereof left ! Your 
Modern Historical Restaurateurs are indeed little better than high- 
priests of Famine; that keep choicest china dinner-sets, only no 
dinner to serve therein. Yet such is our Biographic appetite, 
we run trying from shop to shop, with ever new hope; and, unless 
we could eat the wind, with ever new disappointment. 

Again, consider the whole class of Fictitious Narratives; from 
the highest category of epic or dramatic Poetry, in Shakspeare 
and Homer, down to the lowest of froth Prose, in the Fashionable 
Novel. What are all these but so many mimic Biographies? 
Attempts, here by an inspired Speaker, there by an uninspired 
Babbler, to deliver himself, more or less ineffectually, of the grand 
secret wherewith all hearts labour oppressed : The significance of 
Man's Life; — which deliverance, even as traced in the unfurnished 
head, and printed at the Minerva Press, find readers. For, 
observe, though there is a greatest Fool, as a superlative in every 
kind; and the most Foolish man in the Earth is now indubitably 
living and breathing, and did this morning or lately eat breakfast, 
and is even now digesting the same; and looks out on the world, 
with his dim horn-eyes, and inwardly forms some unspeakable 
theory thereof: yet where shall the authentically Existing be per- 
sonally met with ! Can one of us, otherwise than by guess, know 
that we have got sight of him, have orally communed with him? 
To take even the narrower sphere of this our English Metropolis, 
can any one confidently say to himself, that he has conversed with 
the identical, individual Stupidesu man now extant in London? 



THOMAS CARLYLE ^ 

No one. Deep as we dive in the Profound, there is ever a new 
depth opens: where the ultimate bottom may lie, through what 
new scenes of being we must pass before reaching it (except that 
we know it does He somewhere, and might by human faculty and 
opportunity be reached,) is altogether a mystery to us. Strange, 
tantalising pursuit ! We have the fullest assurance, not only that 
there is a Stupidest of London men actually resident, with bed and 
board of some kind, in London; but that several persons have 
been or perhaps are now speaking face to face with him : while for 
us, chase it as we may, such scientific blessedness will too probably 
be forever denied ! — But the thing we meant to enforce was this 
comfortable fact, that no known Head was so wooden, but there 
might be other heads to which it were a genius and Friar Bacon's 
Oracle. Of no given Book, not even of a fashionable Novel, can 
you predicate with certainty that its vacuity is absolute ; that there 
are not other vacuities which shall partially replenish themselves 
therefrom, and esteem it a plenum. How knowest thou, may the 
distressed Novelwright exclaim, that I, here where I sit, am the 
Foolishest of existing mortals ; that this my Long-ear of a Fictitious 
Biography shall not find one and the other, into whose still longer 
ears it may be the means, under Providence, of instilling some- 
what? We answer. None knows, none can certainly know: 
therefore, write on, worthy Brother, even as thou canst, even as it 
has been given thee. 

Here, however, in regard to 'Fictitious Biographies,' and much 
other matter of like sort, which the greener mind in these days 
inditeth, we may as well insert some singular sentences on the 
importance and significance of Reality, as they stand written for 
us in Professor Gottfried Sauerteig's ^sthetische Springwurzeln; 
a Work,^ perhaps, as yet new to most English readers. The Pro- 
fessor and Doctor is not a man whom we can praise without res- 
ervation; neither shall we say that his Springwurzeln (a sort of 
magical picklocks, as he affectedly names them) are adequate to 
' start^ every holt that locks up an aesthetic mystery : nevertheless, in 
his crabbed, one-sided way, he sometimes hits masses of the truth. 
We endeavour to translate faithfully, and trust the reader will find 
it worth serious perusal: 

1 This is one of Carlyle's characteristic inventions. 



6 BIOGRAPHY 

'The significance, even for poetic purposes,' says Sauerteig, 
' that lies in Reality is too apt to escape us ; is perhaps only now 
beginning to be discerned. When we named Rousseau's Con- 
fessions an elegiaco-didactic Poem, we meant more than an empty 
figure of speech ; we meant a historical scientific fact. 

'Fiction, while the feigner of it knows that he is feigning, par- 
takes, more than we suspect, of the nature of lying; and has 
ever an, in some degree, unsatisfactory character. All My- 
thologies were once Philosophies; were believed; the Epic Poems 
of old time, so long as they continued epic, and had any complete 
impressiveness, were Histories, and understood to be narratives 
oi facts. In so far as Homer employed his gods as mere ornamen- 
tal fringes, and had not himself, or at least did not expect his 
hearers to have, a belief that they were real agents in those antique 
doings; so far did he fail to be genuine; so far was he a partially 
hollow and false singer ; and sang to please only a portion of man's 
mind, not the whole thereof. 

' Imagination is, after all, but a poor matter when it has to part 
company with Understanding, and even front it hostilely in flat 
contradiction. Our mind is divided in twain: there is contest; 
wherein that which is weaker must needs come to the worse. 
Now of all feelings, states, principles, call it what you will, in man's 
mind, is not Behef the clearest, strongest ; against which all others 
contend in vain? Belief is, indeed, the beginning and first con- 
dition of all spiritual Force whatsoever: only in so far as Imagina- 
tion, were it but momentarily, is believed, can there be any use or 
meaning in it, any enjoyment of it. And what is momentary 
Belief? The enjoyment of a moment. Whereas a perennial 
Belief were enjoyment perennially, and with the whole united soul. 

'It is thus that I judge of the Supernatural in an Epic Poem; 
and would say, the instant it has ceased to be authentically super- 
natural, and become what you call "Machinery:" sweep it out 
of sight (schaff' es mir vom Halse) I Of a truth, that same "Ma- 
chinery," about which the critics make such hubbub, was well 
named Machinery; for it is in very deed mechanical, nowise 
inspired or poetical. Neither for us is there the smallest aesthetic 
enjoyment in it ; save only in this way ; that we believe it to have 
been believed, — by the Singer or his Hearers ; into whose case we 



THOMAS CARLYLE • 7 

now laboriously struggle to transport ourselves; and so with 
stinted enough result, catch some reflex of the Reality which for 
them was wholly real, and visible face to face. Whenever it has 
come so far that your "Machinery" is avowedly mechanical and 
unbelieved, — what is it else, if we dare tell ourselves the truth, 
but a miserable, meaningless Deception, kept up by old use and 
wont alone ? If the gods of an Iliad are to us no longer authentic 
Shapes of Terror, heart-stirring, heart-appalling, but only vague, 
glittering Shadows, — what must the dead Pagan gods of an 
Epigoniad be, the dead-living Pagan- Christian gods of a Lusiad, 
the concrete-abstract, evangelical-metaphysical gods of a Paradise 
Lost ? Superannuated lumber ! Cast raiment, at best ; in which 
some poor mime, strutting and swaggering, may or may not set 
forth new noble Human Feelings (again a Reality), and so secure, 
or not secure, our pardon of such hoydenish masking ; for which, 
in any case, he has a pardon to ask. 

'True enough, none but the earHest Epic Poems can claim 
this distinction of entire credibility, of Reahty: after an Iliad, 
a Shaster, a Koran, and other the like primitive performances, 
the rest seem, by this rule of mine, to be altogether excluded from 
the list. Accordingly, what are all the rest, from Virgil's Mneid 
downwards, in comparison? Frosty, artificial, heterogeneous 
things : more of gumflowers than of roses ; at the best, of the two 
mixed incoherently together : to some of which, indeed, it were hard 
to deny the title of Poems; yet to no one of which can that title 
belong in any sense even resembling the old high one it, in those 
old days, conveyed, — when the epithet "divine" or "sacred," 
as applied to the uttered Word of man, was not a vain metaphor, 
a vain sound, but a real name with meaning. Thus, too, the 
farther we recede from those early days, when Poetry, as true 
Poetry is always, was still sacred or divine, and inspired (what ours, 
in great part, only pretends to be), — the more impossible becomes 
it to produce any, we say not true Poetry, but tolerable semblance 
of such; the hollower, in particular, grow all manner of Epics; 
till at length, as in this generation, the very name of Epic sets men 
a-yawning, the announcement of a new Epic is received as a public 
calamity. 

'But what if the impossible being once for all quite discarded, 



8 • BIOGRAPHY 

the probable be well adhered to: how stands it with fiction thenP 
Why, then, I would say, the evil is much mended, but nowise com- 
pletely cured. We have then, in place of the wholly dead modern 
Epic, the partially living modern Novel ; to which latter it is much 
easier to lend that above-mentioned, so essential "momentary 
credence" than to the former: indeed, infinitely easier; for the 
former being flatly incredible, no mortal can for a moment credit it, 
for a moment enjoy it. Thus, here and there, a Tom Jones, d^ 
Meister, a Crusoe, will yield no little solacement to the minds of 
men; though still immeasurably less than a Reality would, were 
the significance thereof as impressively unfolded, were the genius 
that could so unfold it once given us by the kind Heavens. Neither 
say thou that proper Realities are wanting : for Man's Life, now, 
as of old, is the geniune work of God; wherever there is a Man, 
a God also is revealed, and all that is Godlike: a whole epitome 
of the Infinite, with its meanings, lies enfolded in the Life of every 
Man. Only, alas, that the Seer to discern this same Godlike, and 
with fit utterance uniold it for us, is wanting, and may long be 
wanting ! 

'Nay, a question arises on us here, wherein the whole German 
reading- world will eagerly join: Whether man can any longer be 
so interested by the spoken Word, as he often was in those primeval 
days, when rapt away by its inscrutable power, he pronounced it, 
in such dialect as he had, to be transcendental (to transcend all 
measure), to be sacred, prophetic, and the inspiration of a god? 
For myself, I (ich meines Ortes), by faith or by insight, do heartily 
understand that the answer to such question will be, Yea! For 
never that I could in searching find out, has Man been, by Time 
which devours so much, deprivated of any faculty whatsoever 
that he in any era was possessed of. To my seeming, the babe 
born yesterday has all the organs of Body, Soul, and Spirit, and in 
exactly the same combination and entireness, that the oldest Pelas- 
gic Greek, or Mesopotamian Patriarch, or Father Adam himself 
could boast of. Ten fingers, one heart with venous and arterial 
blood therein, still belong to man that is born of woman : when did 
he lose any of his spiritual Endowments either; above all, his 
highest spiritual Endowment, that of revealing Poetic Beauty, and 
of adequately receiving the same ? Not the material, not the sus- 



THOMAS CARLYLE g 

ceptibility is wanting; only the Poet, or long series of Poets, to 
work on these. True, alas too true, the Poet is still utterly want- 
ing, or all but utterly : nevertheless have we not centuries enough 
before us to produce him in? Him and much else! — I, for the 
present, will but predict that chiefly by working more and more 
on Reality, and evolving more and more wisely its inexhaustible 
meanings ; and, in brief, speaking forth in fit utterance whatsoever 
our whole soul believes, and ceasing to speak forth what thing so- 
ever our whole soul does not believe, — will this high emprise be 
accomplished, or approximated to.' 

These notable, and not unfounded, though partial and deep- 
seeing rather than wide-seeing observations on the great import 
of Reality, considered even as a poetic material, we have inserted 
the more willingly, because a transient feeling to the same purpose 
may often have suggested itself to many readers ; and, on the whole, 
it is good that every reader and every writer understand, with all 
intensity of conviction, what quite infinite worth lies in Truth: 
how all-pervading, omnipotent, in man's mind, is the thing we 
name Belief. For the rest, Herr Sauerteig, though one-sided, on 
this matter of Reality, seems heartily persuaded, and is not perhaps 
so ignorant as he looks. It cannot be unknown to him, for ex- 
ample, what noise is made about 'Invention;' what a supreme 
rank this faculty is reckoned to hold in the poetic endowment. 
Great truly is Invention ; nevertheless, that is but a poor exercise 
of it with which Belief is not concerned. 'An Irishman with 
whisky in his head,' as poor Byron said, will invent you, in this 
kind, till there is enough and to spare. Nay, perhaps, if we con- 
sider well, the highest exercise of Invention has, in very deed, 
nothing to do with Fiction; but is an invention of new Truth, 
what we can call a Revelation; which last does undoubtedly 
transcend all other poetic efforts, nor can Herr Sauerteig be too 
loud in its praises. But, on the other hand, whether such effort 
is still possible for man, Herr Sauerteig and the bulk of the world 
are probably at issue ; — and will probably continue so till that 
same 'Revelation,' or new 'Invention of Reality,' of the sort he 
desiderates, shall itself make its appearance. 

Meanwhile, quitting these airy regions, let any one bethink him 
how impressive the smallest historical fact may become, as con- 



lO BIOGRAPHY 

trasted with the grandest fictitious event; what an incalculable 
force lies for us in this consideration: The Thing which I here 
hold imaged in my mind did actually occur; was, in very truth, 
an element in the system of the All, whereof I too form part; 
had therefore, and has, through all time, an authentic being; is 
not a dream, but a reality ! We ourselves can remember reading, 
in Lord Clarendon,^ with feelings perhaps somehow accidentally 
opened to it, — certainly with a depth of impression strange to us 
then and now — that insignificant-looking passage, where Charles, 
after the battle of Worcester, glides down, with Squire Careless, 
from the Royal Oak, at nightfall, being hungry : how, ' making a 
shift to get over hedges and ditches, after walking at least eight 
or nine miles, which were the more grievous to the King by the 
weight of his boots (for he could not put them off when he cut off 
his hair, for want of shoes), before morning they came to a poor 
cottage, the owner whereof being a Roman Catholic was known to 
Careless.'' How this poor drudge, being knocked up from his 
snoring, 'carried them into a little barn full of hay, which was a 
better lodging than he had for himself ; ' and by and by, not with- 
out difficulty, brought his Majesty 'a piece of bread and a great 
pot of buttermilk,' saying candidly that "he himself lived by his 
daily labour, and that what he had brought him was the fare he 
and his wife had:" on which nourishing diet his Majesty, 'staying 
upon the haymow,' feeds thankfully for two days; and then de- 
parts, under new guidance, having first changed clothes, down 
to the very shirt and 'old pair of shoes,' with his landlord; and so, 
as worthy Bunyan has it, 'goes on his way, and sees him no more.' 
Singular enough, if we will think of it ! This then was a genuine 
flesh-and-blood Rustic of the year 1651 : he did actually swallow 
bread and buttermilk (not having ale and bacon), and do field- 
labour: with these hobnailed 'shoes' has sprawled through mud- 
roads in winter, and, jocund or not, driven his team a-field in 
summer: he made bargains; had chafferings and higglings, now 
a sore heart, now a glad one ; was born ; was a son, was a father ; 
toiled in many ways, being forced to it, till the strength was all 
worn out of him: and then — lay down 'to rest his galled back,* 
and sleep there till the long-distant morning ! — How comes it, 

^ History of the Rebellion, iii. 625. 



THOMAS CARLYLE II 

that he alone of all the British rustics who tilled and lived along 
with him, on whom the blessed sun on that same 'fifth day of 
September' was shining, should have chanced to rise on us; that 
this poor pair of clouted Shoes, out of the million milHon hides that 
have been tanned, and cut, and worn, should still subsist, and 
hang visibly together? We see him but for a moment; for one 
moment, the blanket of the Night is rent asunder, so that we be- 
hold and see, and then closes over him — forever. 

So too, in some BosweWs Life of Johnson, how indelible, and 
magically bright, does many a little Reality dwell in our remem- 
brance ! There is no need that the personages on the scene be 
a King and Clown; that the scene be the Forest of the Royal 
Oak, 'on the borders of Staffordshire:' need only that the scene 
lie on this old firm Earth of ours, where we also have so surprisingly 
arrived ; that the personages be men, and seen with the eyes of a 
man. Foolish enough, how some slight, perhaps mean and even 
ugly incident, if real and well presented, will fix itself in a suscep- 
tive memory, and He ennobled there; silvered over with the pale 
cast of thought, with the pathos which belongs only to the Dead. 
For the Past is all holy to us ; the Dead are all holy, even they that 
were base and wicked while alive. Their baseness and wicked- 
ness was not They, was but the heavy and unmanageable En- 
vironment that lay round them, with which they fought unpre- 
vailing: they (the ethereal god-given Force that dwelt in them, 
and was their Self) have now shuffled-off that heavy Environment, 
and are free and pure: their life-long Battle, go how it might, is 
all ended, with many wounds or with fewer; they have been re- 
called from it, and the once harsh-jarring battle-field has become 
a silent awe-inspiring Golgotha, and Gottesacker (Field of God) ! 
— Boswell relates this in itself smallest and poorest of occurrences : 
'As we walked along the Strand to-night, arm in arm, a woman 
of the town accosted us in the usual enticing manner. " No, no, 
my girl," said Johnson; "it won't do." He, however, did not 
treat her with harshness ; and we talked of the wretched life of such 
women.' Strange power of Reality! Not even this poorest of 
occurrences, but now, after seventy years are come and gone, has 
a meaning for us. Do but consider that it is true; that it did in 
very deed occur! That unhappy Outcast, with all her sins and 



12 BIOGRAPHY 

woes, her lawless desires, too complex mischances, her wailings 
and her riotings, has departed utterly ; alas ! her siren finery has 
got all besmutched, ground, generations since, into dust and 
smoke ; of her degraded body, and whole miserable earthly exist- 
ence, all is away: she is no longer here, but far from us, in the 
bosom of Eternity, — whence we too came, whither we too are 
bound ! Johnson said, "No, no, my girl; it won't do;" and then 
'we talked;' — and herewith the wretched one, seen but for the 
twinkling of an eye, passes on into the utter Darkness. No high 
Calista, that ever issued from Story-teller's brain, will impress us 
more deeply than this meanest of the mean ; and for a good reason : 
That she issued from the Maker of Men. 

It is well worth the Artist's while to examine for himself what it 
is that gives such pitiful incidents their memorableness ; his aim 
likewise is, above all things, to be memorable. Half the effect, 
we already perceive, depends on the object; on its being real, on 
its being really seen. The other half will depend on the observer ; 
and the question now is: How are real objects to be so seen; 
on what quality of observing or of style in describing, does this 
so intense pictorial power depend? Often a slight circumstance 
contributes curiously to the result: some little, and perhaps to 
appearance accidental, feature is presented ; a light-gleam, which 
instantaneously excites the mind, and urges it to complete the pic- 
ture, and evolve the meaning thereof for itself. By critics, such 
light-gleams and their almost magical influence have frequently 
been noted : but the power to produce such, to select such features 
as will produce them, is generally treated as a knack, or trick of 
the trade, a secret for being 'graphic;' whereas these magical feats 
are, in truth, rather inspirations; and the gift of performing them, 
which acts unconsciously, without forethought, and as if by nature 
alone, is properly a genius for description. 

One grand, invaluable secret there is, however, which includes 
all the rest, and, what is comfortable, lies clearly in every man's 
power : To have an open loving heart, and what follows from the 
possession of such! Truly it has been said, emphatically in these 
days ought it to be repeated : A loving Heart is the beginning of all 
Knowledge. This it is that opens the whole mind, quickens every 
faculty of the intellect to do its fit work, that of knowing; and 



THOMAS CARLYLE 1 3 

therefrom, by sure consequence, of vividly uttering-forth. Other 
secret for being 'graphic' is there none, worth having: but this 
is an all-sufficient one. See, for example, what a small Boswell 
can do ! Hereby, indeed, is the whole man made a living mirror, 
wherein the wonders of this ever-wonderful Universe are, in their 
true light (which is ever a magical, miraculous one) represented, 
and reflected back on us. It has been said, 'the heart sees farther 
than the head:' but, indeed, without the seeing heart, there is no 
true seeing for the head so much as possible ; all is mere oversight, 
hallucination and vain superficial phantasmagoria, which can per- 
manently profit no one. 

Here, too, may we not pause for an instant, and make a practical 
reflection? Considering the multitude of mortals that handle the 
Pen in these days, and can mostly spell, and write without glaring 
violations of grammar, the question naturally arises: How is it, 
then, that no Work proceeds from them, bearing any stamp of 
authenticity and permanence; of worth for more than one day? 
Ship-loads of Fashionable Novels, Sentimental Rhymes, Tragedies, 
Farces, Diaries of Travel, Tales by flood and field, are swallowed 
monthly into the bottomless Pool: still does the Press toil; in- 
numerable Paper-makers, Compositors, Printers' Devils, Book- 
binders, and Hawkers grown hoarse with loud proclaiming, rest 
not from their labour; and still, in torrents, rushes on the great 
array of Publications, unpausing, to their final home; and still 
Oblivion, like the Grave, cries. Give ! Give ! How is it that of all 
these countless multitudes, no one can attain to the smallest mark 
of excellence, or produce aught that shall endure longer than 'snow- 
flake on the river,' or the foam of penny-beer? We answer: 
Because they are foam; because there is no Reality in them. 
These Three Thousand men, women and children, that make up 
the army of British Authors, do not, if we will well consider it, 
see anything whatever; consequently have nothing that they can 
record and utter, only more or fewer things that they can plausibly 
pretend to record. The Universe, of Man and Nature, is still 
quite shut-up from them ; the ' open secret ' still utterly a secret ; 
because no sympathy with Man or Nature, no love and free sim- 
plicity of heart has yet unfolded the same. Nothing but a pitiful 
Image of their own pitiful Self with its vanities, and grudgings, 



14 BIOGRAPHY 

and ravenous hunger of all kinds, hangs forever painted in the 
retina of these unfortunate persons; so that the starry All, 
with whatsoever it embraces, does but appear as some expanded 
magic-lantern shadow of that same Image, — and naturally looks 
pitiful enough. 

It is vain for these persons to allege that they are naturally with- 
out gift, naturally stupid and sightless, and so can attain to no 
knowledge of anything; therefore, in writing of anything, must 
needs write falsehoods of it, there being in it no truth for them. 
Not so, good Friends. The stupidest of you has a certain faculty; 
were it but that of articulate speech (say, in the Scottish, the Irish, 
the Cockney dialect, or even in ' Governess-English '), and of physi- 
cally discerning what lies under your nose. The stupidest of you 
would perhaps grudge to be compared in faculty with James 
Boswell ; yet see what he has produced ! You do not use your 
faculty honestly ; your heart is shut up ; full of greediness, malice, 
discontent; so your intellectual sense cannot be open. It is vain 
also to urge that James Boswell had opportunities ; saw great men 
and great things, such as you can never hope to look on. What 
make ye of Parson White in Selborne ? He had not only no great 
men to look on, but not even men; merely sparrows and cock- 
chafers : yet has he left us a Biography of these ; which, under its 
title Natural History of Selborne, still remains valuable to us; 
which has copied a little sentence or two faithfully from the In- 
spired Volume of Nature, and so is itself not without inspiration. 
Go ye and do likewise. Sweep away utterly all frothiness and 
falsehood from your heart ; struggle unweariedly to acquire, what 
is possible for every god-created Man, a free, open, humble soul : 
speak not at all, in any wise, till you have somewhat to speak; care 
not for the reward of your speaking, but simply and with undivided 
mind for the truth of your speaking : then be placed in what section 
of Space and of Time soever, do but open your eyes, and they shall 
actually see, and bring you real knowledge, wondrous, worthy of 
belief; and instead of one Boswell and one White, the world will 
rejoice in a thousand, — stationed on their thousand several watch- 
towers, to instruct us by indubitable documents, of whatsoever 
in our so stupendous World comes to light and is! O, had the 
Editor of this Magazine but a magic rod to turn all that not in- 



THOMAS CARLYLE 



IS 



considerable Intellect, which now deluges us with artificial fictitious 
soap-lather, and mere Lying, into the faithful study of Reality, 
— what knowledge of great, everlasting Nature, and of Man's 
ways and doings therein, would not every year bring us in ! Can 
we but change one single soap-latherer and mountebank Juggler, 
into a true Thinker and Doer, who even tries honestly to think and 
do, — great will be our reward. 

But to return; or rather from this point to begin our journey! 
If now, what with Herr Sauerteig's Springwurzeln, what with so 
much lucubration of our own, it have become apparent how deep, 
immeasurable is the 'worth that lies in Reality,^ and farther, how 
exclusive the interest which man takes in Histories of Man, — 
may it not seem lamentable, that so few genuinely good Biog- 
raphies have yet been accumulated in Literature ; that in the whole 
world, one cannot find, going strictly to work, above some dozen 
or baker's dozen, and those chiefly of very ancient date ? Lam- 
entable; yet, after what we have just seen, accountable. An- 
other question might be asked : How comes it that in England we 
have simply one good Biography, this BosweWs Johnson; and of 
good, indifferent, or even bad attempts at Biography, fewer than 
any civilised people? Consider the French and Germans, with 
their Moreris, Bayles, Jordenses, Jochers, their innumerable 
Memoirs^ and Schilderungen, and Biographies Universelles ; not 
to speak of Rousseaus, Goethes, Schuberts, Jung-Stillings : and 
then contrast with these our poor Birches and Kippises and Pecks; 
the whole breed of whom, moreover, is now extinct ! 

With this question, as the answer might lead us far, and come 
out unflattering to patriotic sentiment, we shall not intermeddle; 
but turn rather, with great pleasure, to the fact, that one excellent 
Biography is actually English ; — and even now lies, in Five new 
Volumes, at our hand, soliciting a new consideration from us ; such 
as, age after age (the Perennial showing ever new phases as our 
position alters), it may long be profitable to bestow on it; — to 
which task we here, in this position, in this age, gladly address 
ourselves. 

First, however, let the foolish April-fool day pass by ; and our 
Reader, during these twenty- nine days of uncertain weather that 
will follow, keep pondering, according to convenience, the purport 



l6 LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY 

of Biography in general : then, with the blessed dew of May-day, 
and in unlimited convenience of space, shall all that we have 
written on Johnson and BoswelVs Johnson and Croker's BoswelVs 
Johnson be faithfully laid before him. 



LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY 

THE FIGHT WITH SIR JOHN AYRES 

[From The Autobiography of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, written 
in 1643, first printed by Horace Walpole in 1764. 

Herbert, Edward, first Baron Herbert of Cherbury (i 583-1648), 
philosopher, historian, and diplomatist; while at University College, Oxford, 
taught himself the Romance languages and became a good musician, rider, 
and fencer; went to court, 1600; sheriff of Montgomeryshire, 1605; dur- 
ing a continental tour became intimate with Casaubon and the Constable 
Montmorency, and fought several duels, 1608-10; volunteer at recapture 
of Juliers, 1610; joined Prince of Orange's army, 1614; visited the elector 
palatine and the chief towns of Italy; offered help to the Savoyards, but 
was imprisoned by the French at Lyons, 1615; stayed with Prince of Orange, 
1616; on his return became intimate with Donne, Carew, and Ben Jonson; 
named by Buckingham ambassador at Paris, 1619; tried to obtain French 
support for elector palatine, and suggested marriage between Henrietta 
Maria and Prince Charles; recalled for quarrelling with the French kin'g's 
favourite, De Luynes, 1621, but reappointed on De Luynes's death, 1622; 
recalled, 1624, owing to his disagreement with James I about the French 
marriage negotiations; received in Irish peerage the barony of Cherbury, 
1629, and seat in council of war, 1632; attended Charles I on Scottish ex- 
pedition, 1639-40; committed to the Tower for royalist speech in House 
of Lords, 1642, but released on apologising; aimed at neutrality during the 
war; compelled to admit parliamentary force into Montgomery Castle, 
1644; submitted to parliament and received a pension, 1645; steward of 
duchy of Cornwall and warden of the Stannaries, 1646; visited Gassendi, 
1647; died in London, Selden being one of his executors. His autobiog- 
raphy (to 1624), printed by Horace Walpole, 1764 (thrice reissued), and 
edited by Mr. Sidney Lee, 1886, scarcely mentions his serious pursuits. 
His *De Veritate' (Paris, 1624, London, 1645), the chief of his philosophical 
works, is the first purely metaphysical work by an Englishman. It was un- 
favourably criticised by Baxter, Locke, and others, but commended by 
Gassendi and Descartes. Though named the father of English deism, 
Herbert's real affinity was with the Cambridge Platonists. His poems were 
edited by Mr. Churton Collins, 1881; his 'Life of Henry VIII' (apologetic) 
first published, 1649. — Index and Epitome of D. N. B. 

"But it is doubtful if any other autobiography breathes quite as freely 
the writer's overweening conceit of his own worth, which is the primary 
condition of all autobiographical excellence. At every turn Lord Herbert 



THE FIGHT WITH SIR JOHN AY RES 17 

applauds his own valour, his own beauty, his own gentility of birth. At 
home and abroad he flatters himself that he is the cynosure of neighbouiing 
eyes. He, in fact, conforms from end to end to all the conditions which 
make autobiography successful. He is guilty of many misrepresentations. 
No defect is more patent in his memoirs than the total lack of a sense of 
proportion. Lord Herbert's self-satisfaction is built on sand. It is bred 
of the trivialities of fashionable life, — of the butterfly triumphs won in court 
society. He passes by in contemptuous silence his truly valuable contri- 
butions to philosophy, history, and poetry. But the contrast between the 
grounds on which he professed a desire to be remembered and those on 
which he deserved to be remembered by posterity, gives his book almost all 
its value. Men of solid mental ability and achievements occasionally Hke 
to pose in society as gay Lotharios ; it is rare, however, for them to endeavour, 
even as autobiographers, to convey the impression to all succeeding genera- 
tions that they were gay Lotharios and not much else besides. Yet it is 
such transparent errors of judgment that give autobiography its finest 
flavour." — Sidney Lee, The Autobiography of Edward, Lord Herbert of 
Cherbury, Second Edition, Introduction, p. xiii. Routledge & Sons, London.] 



And now taking boat, I passed along the river of Rhine to the 
Low Countries, where after some stay, I went to Antwerp and 
Brussels; and having passed some time in the court there, went 
from thence to Calais, where taking ship, I arrived at Dover, and 
so went to London. I had scarce been two days there, when the 
Lords of the Council sending for me, ended the difference betwixt 
the Lord of Walden and myself. And now, if I may say it without 
vanity, I was in great esteem both in court and city ; many of the 
greatest desiring my company, though yet before that time I had 
no acquaintance with them. Richard, Earl of Dorset, to whom 
otherwise I was a stranger, one day invited me to Dorset House, 
where bringing me into his gallery, and showing me many pictures, 
he at last brought me to a frame covered with green taffeta, and 
asked me who I thought was there; and therewithal presently 
drawing the curtain, showed me my own picture; whereupon 
demanding how his lordship came to have it, he answered, that he 
had heard so many brave things of me, that he got a copy of a pic- 
ture which one Larkin a painter drew for me, the original whereof 
I intended before my departure to the Low Countries for Sir Thomas 
Lucy. But not only the Earl of Dorset, but a greater person ^ 
than I will here nominate, got another copy from Larkin, and plac- 
ing it afterwards in her cabinet (without that ever I knew any such 

* This was probably Queen Anne, the consort of James I. 
c 



l8 LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY 

thing was done), gave occasion to those who saw it after her death 
of more discourse than I could have wished; and indeed I may 
truly say, that taking of my picture was fatal to me, for more 
reasons than I shall think fit to deliver. 

There was a lady also, wife to Sir John Ayres, knight, who find- 
ing some means to get a copy of my picture from Larkin, gave it 
to Mr. Isaac Oliver, the painter in Blackfriars, and desired him to 
draw it in little after his manner; which being done, she caused it 
to be set in gold and enamelled, and so wore it about her neck, 
so low that she hid it under her breasts, which, I conceive, coming 
afterwards to the knowledge of Sir John Ayres, gave him more 
cause of jealousy than needed, had he known how innocent I 
was from pretending to any thing which might wrong him or his 
lady ; since I could not so much as imagine that either she had my 
picture, or that she bare more than ordinary affection to me. It 
is true that she had a place in court, and attended Queen Anne, 
and was beside of an excellent wit and discourse, she had made 
herself a considerable person; howbeit little more than common 
civility ever passed betwixt us, though I confess I think no man 
was welcomer to her when I came, for which I shall allege this 
passage : — 

Coming one day into her chamber, I saw her through the 
curtains lying upon her bed with a wax candle in one hand, and the 
picture I formerly mentioned in the other. I coming thereupon 
somewhat boldly to her, she blew out the candle, and hid the pic- 
ture from me ; myself thereupon being curious to know what that 
was she held in her hand, got the candle to be lighted again, by 
means whereof I found it was, my picture she looked upon with 
more earnestness and passion than I could have easily believed, 
especially since myself was not engaged in any affection towards 
her. I could willingly have omitted this passage, but that it was 
the beginning of a bloody history which followed : howsoever, yet 
I must before the Eternal God clear her honour. 

And now in court a great person * sent for me divers times to at- 
tend her, which summons though I obeyed, yet God knoweth 
I declined coming to her as much as conveniently I could, without 
incurring her displeasure; and this I did not only for very 

^ Queen Anne. 



THE FIGHT WITH SIR JOHN AY RES 



19 



honest reasons, but, to speak ingenuously, because that affec- 
tion passed betwixt me and another lady (who I believe was 
the fairest of her time) as nothing could divert it. I had not 
been long in London, when a violent burning fever seized upon me, 
which brought me almost to my death, though at last I did by 
slow degrees recover my health. Being thus upon my amend- 
ment, the Lord Lisle, afterwards Earl of Leicester, sent me word 
that Sir John Ayres intended to kill me in my bed, and wished me 
keep a guard upon my chamber and person ; the same advertise- 
ment was confirmed by Lucy, Countess of Bedford, and the Lady 
Hobby shortly after. Hereupon I thought fit to entreat Sir 
WiUiam Herbert, now Lord Powis, to go to Sir John Ayres, and 
tell him that I marvelled much at the information given me by 
these great persons, and that I could not imagine any sufficient 
ground hereof ; howbeit, if he had anything to say to me in a fair 
and noble way, I would give him the meeting as soon as I had got 
strength enough to stand upon my legs; Sir Wilham hereupon 
brought me so ambiguous and doubtful an answer from him, that 
whatsoever he meant, he would not declare yet his intention, 
which was really, as I found afterwards, to kill me any way that he 
could. Finding no means thus to surprise me, he sent me a letter 
to this effect; that he desired to meet me somewhere, and that it 
might so fall out as I might return quietly again. To this I re- 
plied, that if he desired to fight with me upon equal terms, I should 
upon assurance of the field and fair play, give him meeting when 
he did any way specify the cause, and that I did not think fit 
to come to him upon any other terms, having been sufficiently 
informed of his plots to assassinate me. 

After this, finding he could take no advantage against me then 
in a treacherous way, he resolved to assassinate me in this manner; 
hearing I was to come to Whitehall on horseback, with two lacqueys 
only, he attended my coming back in a place called Scotland Yard, 
at the hither end of Whitehall, as you come to it from the Strand, 
hiding himself there with four men armed, on purpose to kill me. 
I took horse at Whitehall Gate, and passing by that place, he 
being armed with a sword and dagger, without giving me so much 
as the least warning, ran at me furiously, but instead of me, 
wounded my horse in the brisket, as far as his sword could enter 



20 LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY 

for the bone; my horse hereupon starting aside, he ran him again 
in the shoulder, which, though it made the horse more timorous, yet 
gave me time to draw my sword. His men thereupon encompassed 
me, and wounded my horse in three places more ; this made my 
horse kick and fling in that manner as his men durst not come 
near me ; which advantage I took to strike at Sir John Ayres with 
all my force, but he warded the blow both with his sword and 
dagger; instead of doing him harm, I broke my sword within a foot 
of the hilt. Hereupon some passenger that knew me, and ob- 
serving my horse bleeding in so many places, and so many men 
assaulting me, and my sword broken, cried to me several times, 
*'Ride away, ride away; " but I, scorning a base flight upon what 
terms soever, instead thereof alighted as well as I could from my 
horse. I had no sooner put one foot upon the ground, but Sir 
John Ayres pursuing me, made at my horse again, which the horse 
perceiving, pressed on me on the side I alighted, in that manner 
that he threw me down, so that I remained flat upon the 
ground, only one foot hanging in the stirrup, with that piece of a 
sword in my right hand. Sir John Ayres hereupon ran about 
the horse, and was thrusting his sword into me, when I, finding 
myself in this danger, did with both my arms reaching at his legs 
pull them towards me, till he fell down backwards on his head; 
one of my footmen hereupon, who was a little Shropshire boy, freed 
my foot out of the stirrup; the other, which was a great fellow, 
having run away as soon as he saw the first assault. This gave 
me time to get upon my legs, and to put myself in the best posture 
I could with that poor remnant of a weapon. Sir John Ayres 
by this time likewise was got up, standing betwixt me and some 
part of Whitehall, with two men on each side of him, and his 
brother behind him, with at least twenty or thirty persons 
of his friends, or attendants of the Earl of Suffolk.^ Observing 
thus a body of men standing in opposition against me, though to 
speak truly I saw no swords drawn but by Sir John Ayres and his 
men, I ran violently against Sir John Ayres ; but he, knowing my 
sword had no point, held his sword and dagger over his head, as 
believing I could strike rather than thrust, which I no sooner per- 

^ Father of Lord Howard of Walden, with whom Herbert had lately quar- 
relled. — Lee. 



THE FIGHT WITH SIR JOHN AY RES 2 1 

ceived but I put a home thrust to the middle of his breast, that I 
threw him down with so much force, that his head fell first to the 
ground, and his heels upwards. His men hereupon assaulted me, 
when one Mr. Mansel, a Glamorganshire gentleman, finding so 
many set against me alone, closed with one of them; a Scotch 
gentleman also closing with another, took him off also. All I 
could well do to those two which remained was to ward their 
thrusts, which I did with that resolution that I got ground upon 
them. Sir John Ayres was now got up a third time, when I mak- 
ing towards him with the intention to close, thinking that there was 
otherwise no safety for me, put by a thrust of his with my left hand, 
and so coming within him, received a stab with his dagger on my 
right side, which ran down my ribs as far as my hip, which I feeling, 
did with my right elbow force his hand, together with the hilt of 
the dagger, so near the upper part of my right side, that I made 
him leave hold. The dagger now sticking in me. Sir Henry Gary, 
afterwards Lord of Falkland, and Lord Deputy of Ireland, find- 
ing the dagger thus in my body, snatched it out. This while I, 
being closed with Sir John Ayres, hurt him on the head, and threw 
him down a third time, when kneeling on the ground and bestriding 
him, I struck at him as hard as I could with my piece of a sword, 
and wounded him in four several places, and did almost cut off 
his left hand; his two men this while struck at me, but it pleased 
God even miraculously to defend me; for when I lifted up my 
sword to strike at Sir John Ayres, I bore off their blows 
half a dozen times. His friends now finding him in this danger, 
took him by the head and shoulders, and drew him from be- 
twixt my legs, and carried him along with them through 
Whitehall, at the stairs whereof he took boat. Sir Herbert 
Croft (as he told me afterwards) met him upon the water 
vomiting all the way, which I believe was caused by the violence 
of the first thrust I gave him. His servants, brother, and friends, 
being now retired also, I remained master of the place and his 
weapons ; having first wrested his dagger from him, and afterward 
struck his sword out of his hand. 

This being done, I retired to a friend's house in the Strand, 
where I sent for a surgeon, who searching my wound on the right 
side, and finding it not to be mortal, cured me in the space of some 



22 LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY 

ten days, during which time I received many noble visits and 
messages from some of the best in the kingdom. Being now fully 
recovered of my hurts, I desired Sir Robert Harley to go to Sir John 
Ayres, and tell him, that though I thought he had not so much 
honour left in him, that I could be anyway ambitious to get it, yet 
that I desired to see him in the field with his sword in his hand ; 
the answer that he sent me was, that he would kill me with a musket 
out of a window. 

The Lords of the Privy Council, who had first sent for my sword, 
that they might see the little fragment of a weapon with which I 
had so behaved myself, as perchance the Hke had not been heard 
in any credible way, did afterwards command both him and me 
to appear before them ; but I absenting myself on purpose, sent one 
Humphrey Hill with a challenge to him in an ordinary, which he 
refusing to receive, Humphrey Hill put it upon the point of his 
sword, and so let it fall before him and the company then present. 

The Lords of the Privy Council had now taken order to appre- 
hend Sir John Ayres; when I, finding nothing else to be done, 
submitted myself likewise to them. Sir John Ayres had now 
pubHshed everywhere, that the ground of his jealousy, and conse- 
quently of his assaulting me, was drawn from the confession of his 
wife the Lady Ayres. She, to vindicate her honour, as well as 
free me from this accusation, sent a letter to her aunt the Lady 
Crook, to this purpose : That her husband Sir John Ayres did lie 
falsely ; but most falsely of all did lie when he said he had it from 
her confession, for she had never said any such thing. 

This letter the Lady Crook presented to me most opportunely as 
I was going to the Council table before the Lords, who having 
examined Sir John Ayres concerning the cause of the quarrel 
against me, found him still persist in his wife's confession of the 
fact; and now he being withdrawn, I was sent for, when the Duke 
of Lennox, afterwards of Richmond, telHng me that was the ground 
of his quarrel, and the only excuse he had for assaulting me in that 
manner; I desired his Lordship to peruse the letter, which I told 
him was given me as I came into the room. This letter being 
pubHcly read by a clerk of the Council, the Duke of Lennox then 
said, that he thought Sir John Ayres the most miserable man 
living; for his wife had not only given him the lie, as he found by 



THE FIGHT WITH SIR JOHN AY RES 



23 



her letter, but his father had disinherited him for attempting to kill 
me in that barbarous fashion, which was most true, as I found 
afterwards. For the rest, that I might content myself with what 
I had done, it being more almost than could be believed, but that 
I had so many witnesses thereof ; for all which reasons he com- 
manded me, in the name of his Majesty and all their Lordships, 
not to send any more to Sir John Ayres, nor to receive any message 
from him, in the way of fighting, which commandment I observed. 
Howbeit I must not omit to tell, that some years afterwards, Sir 
John Ayres, returning from Ireland by Beaumaris, where I then 
was, some of my servants and followers broke open the doors of the 
house where he was, and would, I believe, have cut him into 
pieces, but that I, hearing thereof, came suddenly to the house and 
recalled them, sending him word also, that I scorned to give him 
the usage he gave me, and that I would set him free out of the town ; 
which courtesy of mine, as I was told afterwards, he did thankfully 
acknowledge. 



SAMUEL PEPYS 

EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY 

[From Memoirs of Samuel Pepys, Esq., F. R. S., comprising his Diary 
from 1659 to 1669. First edited by Lord Braybrooke, 1825; edited, with 
additions, by H. B. Wheatley, 1893-99, 

Pepys, Samuel (i 633-1 703), diarist; son of John Pepys, a London 
tailor, was educated at St. Paul's School, London, and Trinity Hall and 
Magdalene College, Cambridge; M. A., 1660; entered the family of his 
father's first cousin, Sir Edward Montagu (afterwards first Earl of Sand- 
wich) [q. v.], 1656; 'clerk of the king's ships' and a clerk of the privy seal, 
1660; surveyor-general of the victualling office, 1665, in which capacity he 
showed himself an energetic official and a zealous reformer of abuses; com- 
mitted to the Tower of London on charge of complicity with the popish 
plot, and deprived of his offices, 1679, but released, 1680; secretary of the 
admiralty, 1686; deprived of the secretaryship of the admiralty at the revo- 
lution, after which he Hved in retirement, chiefly at Clapham. Fifty volumes 
of his manuscripts are in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. His 'Diary' re- 
mained in cipher in Magdalene College, Cambridge, until 1825, when it was 
deciphered by John Smith and edited by Lord Braybrooke. An enlarged 
edition by Mynors Bright [q. v.] appeared in 1875-9, and the whole, except 
a few passages which cannot be printed, was pubhshed in eight volumes 
(1893, &c.) by Mr. Henry B. Wheatley.— /w^/e^v and Epitome of D. N. B. 



24 SAMUEL PEPYS 

"Now, if ever, we should be able to form some notion of that unparalleled 
figure in the annals of mankind — unparalleled for three good reasons: 
first, because he was a man known to his contemporaries in a halo of almost 
historical pomp, and to his remote descendants with an indecent familiarity, 
like a taproom comrade; second, because he has outstripped all competitors 
in the art or virtue of a conscious honesty about one's self; and, third, be- 
cause, being in many ways a very ordinary person, he has yet placed himself 
before the public eye with such a fulness and such an intimacy of detail as 
might be envied by a genius like Montaigne. Not then for his own sake 
only, but as a character in a unique position, endowed with a unique talent, 
and shedding a unique light upon the hves of the mass of mankind, he is 
surely worthy of prolonged and patient study. . . . 

"The whole world, town or country, was to Pepys a garden of Armida. 
Wherever he went, his steps were winged with the most eager expectation; 
whatever he did, it was done with the most lively pleasure. An insatiable 
curiosity in all the shows of the world and all the secrets of knowledge, 
filled him brimful of the longing to travel, and supported him in the toils of 
study. Rome was the dream of his life; he was never happier than when he 
read or talked of the Eternal City. When he was in Holland, he was 'with 
child' to see any strange thing. Meeting some friends and singing with 
them in a palace near the Hague, his pen fails him to express his passion of 
delight, 'the more so because in a heaven of pleasure and in a strange coun- 
try.' He must go to see all famous executions. He must needs visit the 
body of a murdered man, defaced 'with a broad wound,' he says, 'that 
makes my hand now shake to write of it.' He learned to dance, and was 
'like to make a dancer.' He learned to sing, and walked about Gray's 
Inn Fields 'humming to myself (which is now my constant practice) the 
trillo.' He learned to play the lute, the flute, the flageolet, and the theorbo, 
and it was not the fault of his intention if he did not learn the harpsichord 
or the spinet. He learned to compose songs, and burned to give forth 'a 
scheme and theory of music not yet ever made in the world.' When he 
heard 'a fellow whistle like a bird exceeding well,' he promised to return 
another day and give an angel for a lesson in the art. Once, he writes, 'I 
took the Bezan back with me, and with a brave gale and tide reached up 
that night to the Hope, taking great pleasure in learning the seamen's 
manner of singing when they sound the depths.' If he found himself rusty 
in his Latin grammar, he must fall to it like a schoolboy. He was a member 
of Harrington's Club till its dissolution, and of the Royal Society before it 
had received the name. Boyle's 'Hydrostatics' was 'of infinite delight' 
to him, walking in Barnes Elms. We find him comparing Bible concord- 
ances, a captious judge of sermons, deep in Descartes and Aristotle. We 
find him, in a single year, studying timber and the measurement of timber; 
tar and oil, hemp, and the process of preparing cordage; mathematics and 
accounting; the hull and the rigging of ships from a model; and 'looking 
and improving himself of the (naval) stores with ' — hark to the fellow ! — 
'great delight.' His familiar spirit of delight was not the same with Shel- 
ley's ; but how true it was to him through life ! He is only copying some- 
thing, and behold, he 'takes great pleasure to rule the lines, and have the 
capital words wrote with red ink;' he has only had his coal-cellar emptied 
and cleaned, and behold, 'it do please him exceedingly.' A hog's harslett 
is 'a piece of meat he loves.' He cannot ride home in my Lord Sandwich's 
coach, but he must exclaim with breathless gusto, 'his noble, rich coach.' 



EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY 



25 



When he is bound for a supper party, he anticipates a 'glut of pleasure.' 
When he has a new watch, 'to see my childishness,' says he, 'I could not 
forbear carrying it in my hand and seeing what o'clock it was an hundred 
times.' To go to Vauxhall, he says, and 'to hear the nightingales and other 
birds, hear fiddles, and there a harp and here a Jew's trump, and here laugh- 
ing, and there fine people walking, is mighty divertizing.' And the night- 
ingales, I take it, were particularly dear to him; and it was again 'with 
great pleasure' that he paused to hear them as he walked to Woolwich, 
while the fog was rising and the April sun broke through." — Robert Louis 
Stevenson, "Samuel Pepys," in Familiar Studies of Men and Books, 1882. 
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.] 

April 8th, 1661. About eight o'clock, we took barge at the 
Tower, Sir William Batten and his lady, Mrs. Turner, Mr. Fowler, 
and I. A very pleasant passage, and so to Gravesend, where we 
dined, and from thence a coach took them, and me and Mr. Fowler, 
with some others, come from Rochester to meet us, on horseback. 
At Rochester, where alight at Mr. Alcock's, and there drank, and 
had good sport, with his bringing out so many sorts of cheese. 
Then to the Hill-house at Chatham, where I never was before, and 
I found a pretty pleasant house, and am pleased with the armes that 
hang up there. Here we supped very merry, and late to bed; Sir 
William telling me that old Edgeborrow, his predecessor, did die 
and walk in my chamber, did make me somewhat afraid, but not 
so much as, for mirth sake, I did seem. So to bed, in the Treas- 
urer's chamber. 

9th. Lay and slept well till three in the morning, and then 
waking, and by the light of the moon I saw my pillow (which 
overnight I flung from me) stand upright, but, not bethinking 
myself what it might be, I was a little afraid, but sleep overcome 
all, and so lay till nigh morning, at which time I had a candle 
brought me, and a good fire made, and in general it was a great 
pleasure all the time I staid here to see how I am respected and 
honoured by all people ; and I find that I begin to know now how to 
receive so much reverence, which, at the beginning, I could not tell 
how to do. Sir William and I by coach to the dock, and there 
viewed all the storehouses, and the old goods that are this day to be 
sold, which was great pleasure to me, and so back again by coach 
home, where we had a good dinner, and, among other strangers that 
come, there was Mr. Hempson and his wife, a pretty woman, and 
speaks Latin ; Mr. Allen, and two daughters of his, both very tall, 



26 SAMUEL PEPYS 

and the youngest^ very handsome, so much as I could not forbear to 
love her exceedingly, having, among other things, the best hand that 
ever I saw. After dinner, we went to fit books and things (Tom 
Hater having this morning come to us) for the sale, by an inch of 
candle, and very good sport we and the ladies that stood by had, to 
see the people bid. Among other things sold there was all the 
State's armes,^ which Sir W. Batten bought; intending to set up 
some of the images in his garden, and the rest to burn on the Coro- 
nacion night. The sale being done, the ladies and I, and Captain 
Pitt, and Mr. Castle took barge, and down we went to see the 
Sovereigne which we did, taking great pleasure therein, sing- 
ing all the way, and among other pleasures, I put my Lady, 
Mrs. Turner, Mrs. Hempson, and the two Mrs. Aliens, into 
the lanthorn, and I went in and kissed them, demanding it 
as a fee due to a principall ofl&cer, with all which we were 
exceeding merry, and drunk some bottles of wine, and neat's 
tongue, &c. Then back again home, and so supped, and, 
after much mirth, to bed. 

loth. In the morning to see the Dock-houses. First, Mr. Pett's, 
the builder, and there was very kindly received, and among other 
things he did offer my Lady Batten a parrot, the best I ever saw, 
that knew Mingo so soon as it saw him, having been bred formerly 
in the house with them ; but for talking and singing I never heard 
the like. My Lady did accept of it. Then to see Commissioner 
Pett's house, he and his family being absent, and here I wondered 
how my Lady Batten walked up and down with curious looks to see 
how neat and rich everything is ; and indeed both the house and 
garden is most handsome, saying that she would get it, for it be- 
longed formerly to the Surveyor of the Navy. Then on board the 
Prince, now in the dock, and indeed it has one and no more rich 
cabins for carved work, but no gold in her. After that, back home, 
and there eat a little dinner. Then to Rochester, and there saw 
the Cathedrall, which is now fitting for use, and the organ then 
a-tuning. Then away thence, observing the great doors of the 
church, as they say, covered with the skins of the Danes. And 
also had much mirth at a tombe. So to the Salutacione tavern, 
where Mr. Alcock and many of the towne come and entertained 
1 Rebecca. 2 j-_g^ Coats of arms. 



EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY 



27 



US with wine and oysters and other things, and hither come Sir 
John Minnes to us, who is come to-day from London to see " the 
Henery," in which he intends to ride as Vice-Admiral in the 
narrow seas all this summer. Here much mirth, but I was a little 
troubled to stay too long, because of going to Hempson's, which 
afterwards we did, and found it in all things a most pretty house, 
and rarely furnished, only it had a most ill accesse on all sides 
to it, which is a greatest fault that, I think, can be in a house. 
Here we had, for my sake, two fiddles, the one a base viall, on 
which he that played, played well some lyra lessons, but both 
together made the worst musique that ever I heard. We had 
a fine coUacion, but I took little pleasure in that, for the illness 
of the musique, and for the intentnesse of my mind upon Mrs. 
Rebecca Allen. After we had done eating, the ladies went to 
dance, and among the men we had, I was forced to dance, too; 
and did make an ugly shift. Mrs. R. Allen danced very well, 
and seems the best humoured woman that ever I saw. About 
nine o'clock Sir William and my Lady went home, and we con- 
tinued dancing an houre or two, and so broke up very pleasant 
and merry, and so walked home, I leading Mrs. Rebecca, who 
seemed, I know not why, in that and other things, to be desirous 
of my favours, and would in all things show me respects. Going 
home, she would needs have me sing, and I did pretty well, and 
was highly esteemed by them. So to Captain Allen's (where we 
was last night, and heard him play on the harpsichon, and I find 
him to be a perfect good musician), and there, having no mind 
to leave Mrs. Rebecca, I did what with talk and singing (her father 
and I), Mrs. Turner and I staid there till two o'clock in the morn- 
ing, and was most exceeding merry, and I had the opportunity of 
kissing Mrs. Rebecca very often. 

nth. At two o'clock, with very great mirth, we went to our 
lodging and to bed, and lay till seven, and then called up by 
Sir W. Batten ; so I rose, and we did some business, and then 
come Captain Allen, and he and I withdrew, and sang a song 
or two, and among others, took great pleasure in " Goe and bee 
hanged, that's twice good bye." The young ladies come too, 
and so I did again please myself with Mrs. Rebecca ; and about 
nine o'clock, after we had breakfasted, we sett forth for London, 



28 SAMUEL PEPYS 

and indeed I was a little troubled to part with Mrs. Rebecca, 
for which God forgive me. Thus we went away through 
Rochester. We baited at Dartford, and thence to London, 
but of all the journeys that ever I made, this was the merriest, 
and I was in a strange mode for mirth. Among other things, 
I got my Lady to let her mayd, Mrs. Anne, to ride all the way 
on horseback, and she rides exceeding well; and so I called 
[her] my clerk, that she went to wait upon me. I met two little 
schoolboys going with pichers of ale to their schoolmaster to 
break up against Easter, and I did drink of some of one of 
them, and give him two-pence. By and by, we come to two 
little girls keeping cowes, and I saw one of them very pretty, 
so I had a mind to make her aske my blessing, and telling her 
that I was her godfather, she asked me innocently whether I 
was not Ned Warding, and I said that I was, so she kneeled 
down, and very simply called, " Pray, godfather, pray to God 
to bless me," which made us very merry, and I gave her two- 
pence. In several places, I asked women whether they would 
sell me their children, but they denied me all, but said they 
would give me one to keep for them, if I would. Mrs. Anne 
and I rode under the man that hangs upon Shooter's Hill, and 
a filthy sight it was to see how his flesh is shrunk to his bones. 
So home, and I found all well, and a good deal of work done 
since I went. So to bed very sleepy for last night's work, con- 
cluding that it is the pleasantest journey in all respects that 
ever I had in my life. 

January 2d, 1665-6. Up by candle-light again, and my busi- 
ness being done, to my Lord Brouncker's, and there find Sir J. 
Minnes and all his company, and Mr. Boreman and Mrs. Turner, 
but, above all, my dear Mrs. Knipp, with whom I sang, and in 
perfect pleasure I was to hear her sing, and especially her little 
Scotch song of ''Barbary Allen;" and to make our mirth the 
completer, Sir J. Minnes was in the highest pitch of mirth, and his 
mimicall tricks, that ever I saw, and most excellent pleasant com- 
pany he is, and the best musique that ever I saw, and certainly 
would have made an excellent actor, and now would be an excel- 



EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY 20 

lent teacher of actors. Then, it being past night, against my 
will, took leave. 

******* 

5th. I with my Lord Brouncker and Mrs. Williams by coach 
with four horses to London, to my Lord's house in Covent Garden.^ 
But, Lord ! what staring to see a nobleman's coach come to town ! 
And porters every where bow to us ; and such begging of beggars ! 
And delightful it is to see the town full of people again ; and shops 
begin to open, though in many places seven or eight together, 
and more, all shut ; but yet the town is full, compared with what it 
used to be. I mean the City end : for Covent Garden and West- 
minster are yet very empty of people, no court nor gentry being 
there. Home, thinking to get Mrs. Knipp, but could not, she be- 
ing busy with company, but sent me a pleasant letter, writing her- 
self "Barbary Allen." Reading a discourse about the river of 
Thames, the reason of its being choked up in several places with 
shelfes: which is plain is, by the encroachments made upon the 
River, and running out of causeways into the River, at every 
wood-wharf e : which was not heretofore, when Westminster Hall 
and White Hall were built, and Redriffe Church, which now are 
sometimes overflown with water. 

6th. To a great dinner and much company. Mr. Cuttle and his 
lady and I went, hoping to get Mrs. Knipp to us, having wrote a 
letter to her in the morning, calling myself ''Dapper Dicky," ^ in 
answer to her's of ''Barbary Allen," but could not, and am told by 
the boy that carried my letter, that he found her crpng ; and I fear 
she lives a sad Hfe with that ill-natured fellow her husband : so we 
had a great, but I a melancholy dinner. After dinner to cards, and 
then comes notice that my wife is come unexpectedly to me to town : 
so I to her. It is only to see what I do, and why I come not home ; 
and she is in the right that I would have a little more of Mrs. Knipp 's 
company before I go away. My wife to fetch away my things from 
Woolwich, and I back to cards, and after cards to choose King and 
Queene, and a good cake there was, but no marks found ; but I 

^ In the Piazza ; and one of the largest houses in what was then the most 
fashionable part of London. 

2 A song called "Dapper Dick" is in the British Museum; it begins, "In a 
barren tree." It was printed in 17 10. 



30 



SAMUEL PEPYS 



privately found the clove, the mark of the knave, and privately 
put it into Captain Cocke's piece, which made some mirth, because 
of his lately being known by his buying of clove and mace of the 
East India prizes. At night home to my lodging, where I find my 
wife returned with my things. It being Twelfth-Night, they had 
got the fiddler, and mighty merry they were ; and I above, come not 
to them, leaving them dancing, and choosing King and Queene. 



Feb. 23d, 1665-6. To my Lord Sandwich's, who did lie last 
night at his house in Lincoln's Inne Fields. It being fine walking 
in the morning, and the streets full of people again. There I staid, 
and the house full of people come to take leave of my Lord, who this 
day goes out of towne upon his embassy towards Spain ; and I was 
glad to find Sir W. Coventry to come, though I know it is only 
a piece of courtship. To Mr. Hales's, and my wife's picture pleases 
me well, and I begin to doubt the picture of my Lady Peters my wife 
takes her posture from, and which is an excellent picture, is not of 
hismaking — it is so master-like. ComesMrs. Knipptoseemy wife, 
and I spend all the night talking with this baggage, and teaching her 
my song of "Beauty, retire," which she sings and makes go most 
rarely, and a very fine song it seems to be. She also entertained me 
with repeating many of her own and others' parts of the play-house, 
which she do most excellently ; and tells me the whole practices of 
the play-house and players, and is in every respect most excellent 
company. So I supped, and was merry at home all the evening, 
and the rather it being my birthday 2,2) years, for which God be 
praised that I am in so good a condition of health and estate, and 
everything else as I am, beyond expectation, in all. 

^ * H: * 4: H: * 

May 4th. To Mr. Hales, to see what he had done to Mrs. Pierce's 
picture, and whatever he pretends, I do not think it will ever be so 
good a picture as my wife's. Thence home to dinner, and had a 
great fray with my wife about Browne's coming to teach her to paint, 
and sitting with me at table, which I will not yield to. I do thor- 
oughly believe she means no hurt in it ; but very angry we were, 
and I resolved all into my having my will done, without disputing, 



EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY 



31 



be the reason what it will ; and so I will have it. This evening, 
being weary of my late idle courses, I bound myself to very strict 
rules till Whitsunday next. 

5th. It being a very fine moonshine, my wife and Mercer come 
into the garden, and, my business being done, we sang till about 
twelve at night, with mighty pleasure to ourselves and neighbours, 
by their casements opening. 

*sU ^ ^ «i« «i> «i« 

•i* *T" *l* ^ #J> #1* 

9th. To White Hall, and heard the Duke commend Deane's ship, 
''The Rupert," before "The Defyance," built by Castle, in hear- 
ing of Sir W. Batten, which pleased me mightily. To Pierce's, 
where I find Knipp. Thence with them to Cornhill, to call and 
choose a chimneypiece for Pierce's closet. My wife mightily vexed 
at my being abroad with these women ; and, when they were gone, 
called them I know not what, which vexed me, having been so 
innocent with them. 

12th. I find my wife troubled at my checking her last night in 
the coach, in her long stories out of Grand Cyrus, which she would 
tell, though nothing to the purpose, nor in any good manner.* 
This she took unkindly, and I think I was to blame indeed ; but 
she do find with reason, that, in the company of Pierce, Knipp, or 
other women that I love, I do not value her, or mind her as I ought. 
However, very good friends by and by. . . . 

13th. (Lord's day.) To Westminster, and into St. Margett's 
Church, where I heard a young man play the fool upon the doctrine 
of Purgatory. 

*^U •!« ^^ ^fi «lf %l« 

^ »{• ^ *^ *I* 1* 

May 29th. King's birthday, and Restoration day. Waked with 
the ringing of bells all over the town: so up before five o'clock 

^ Sir Walter ^cott observes, in his Life of Dryden, that the romances of Cal- 
prenede and Scuderi, those ponderous and unmerciful folios, now consigned to 
oblivion, were, in their day, not only universally read and admired, but supposed 
to furnish the most perfect models of gallantry and heroism. Dr. Johnson read 
them all. "I have," says Mrs. Chapone, "and yet I am still alive, dragged 
through 'Le Grand Cyrus,' in twelve huge volumes; 'Cleopatra,' in eight or ten; 
'Ibrahim,' 'Clehe,' and some others, whose names, as well as all the rest of them, 
I have forgotten." {Letters to Mrs. Carter.) No wonder that Pepys sat on 
thorns, when his wife began to recite "Le Grand Cyrus" in the coach, "and 
trembled at the impending tale." — Braybrooke. 



32 SAMUEL PEPYS 

and to the office. At noon I did, upon a small invitation of 
Sir W. Pen's, go and dine with Sir W. Coventry at his office, 
where great good cheer, and many pleasant stories of Sir W. 
Coventry. After dinner, to the Victualling Office; and there, 
beyond belief, did acquit myself very well to full content; so that, 
beyond expectation, I got over that second rub in this business; 
and if ever I fall on it again, I deserve to be undone. My wife 
comes to me, to tell me, that if I would see the handsomest woman 
in England, I shall come home presently; and who should it be 
but the pretty lady of our parish, that did heretofore sit on the other 
side of our church, over against our gallery, that is since married — 
she with Mrs. Anne Jones, one of this parish, that dances finely. 
And so I home ; and indeed she is a pretty black woman — her 
name Mrs. Horsely. But, Lord ! to see how my nature could not 
refrain from the temptation ; but I must invite them to go to Fox- 
hall, to Spring Gardens, though I had freshly received minutes of a 
great deal of extraordinary business. However, I sent them before 
with Creed, and I did some of my business; and so after them, 
and find them there, in an arbour, and had met with Mrs. Pierce, 
and some company with her. So here I spent 20s. upon them, and 
were pretty merry. Among other things, had a fellow that imitated 
all manner of birds, and dogs, and hogs, with his voice, which was 
mighty pleasant. Staid here till night : then set Mrs.Pierce in at the 
New Exchange ; and ourselves took coach, and so set Mrs. Horsely 
home, and then home ourselves, but with great trouble in the streets, 
by bonfires, it being the King's birthday and day of Restoration ; 
but. Lord ! to see the difference how many there were on the 
other side, and so few on ours, the City side of the Temple, would 
make one wonder the difference between the temper of one sort of 
people and the other: and the difference among all between what 
they do now, and what it was the night when Monk come into 
the City. Such a night as that I never think to see again, nor think 
it can be. 

March 2d, 1667. After dinner, with my wife, to the King's 
house to see ''The Maiden Queene," a new play of Dryden's, 
mightily commended for the regularity of it, and the strain and 
wit; and, the truth is, there is a comical part done by 



EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY 33 

Nell/ which is Florimell, that I never can hope ever to see the like 
done again, by man or woman. The King and Duke of York were 
at the play. But so great performance of a comical part was 
never, I believe, in the world before as Nell do this, both as a 
mad girle, then most and best of all when she comes in like a 
young gallant; and hath the motions and carriage of a spark 
the most that ever I saw any man have. It makes me, I con- 
fess, admire her. 

******* 

March 3d, 1668. Up betimes to work again, and then met at 
the Office, where to our great business of this answer to the Par- 
liament; where to my great vexation I find my Lord Brouncker 
prepared only to excuse himself, while I, that have least reason 
to trouble myself, am preparing with great pains to defend them 
all: and more, I perceive, he would lodge the beginning of dis- 
charging ships by ticket upon me : but I care not, for I believe I 
shall get more honour by it when the Parhament, against my 
will, shall see how the whole business of the Office was done by 
me. I with my clerks to dinner, and thence presently down with 
Lord Brouncker, W. Pen, T. Harvey, T. Middleton, and Mr. 
Tippets, who first took his place this day at the table, as a Com- 
missioner, in the room of Commissioner Pett. Down by water 
to Deptford, where the King, Queen, and Court are to see launched 
the new ship built by Mr. Shish, called "The Charles." God 
send her better luck than the former ! Here some of our breth- 
ren, who went in a boat a little before my boat, did by appoint- 
ment take opportunity of asking the King's leave that we might 
make full use of the want of money, in our excuse to the Parlia- 
ment for the business of tickets, and other things they will lay 
to our charge, all which arise from nothing else: and this the 
King did readily agree to, and did give us leave to make our full 
use of it. The ship being well launched, I back again by boat. 

4th. Vexed and sickish to bed, and there slept about three 
hours, but then waked, and never in so much trouble in all my 
life of mind, thinking of the task I have upon me, and upon what 
dissatisfactory grounds, and what the issue of it may be to me. 

^ Nell Gwynne. 



34 SAMUEL PEPYS 

5th. With these thoughts I lay troubling myself till six o'clock, 
restless, and at last getting my wife to talk to me to comfort 
me, which she at last did, and made me resolve to quit my 
hands of this Office, and endure the trouble no longer than till 
I can clear myself of it. So with great trouble, but yet with 
some ease, from this discourse with my wife, I up, and at 
my Office, whither come my clerks, and so I did huddle the 
best I could some more notes for my discourse to-day, and by 
nine o'clock was ready, and did go down to the Old Swan, and 
there by boat, with T. Harvey and W. Hewer with me, to West- 
minster, where I found myself come time enough, and my 
brethren all ready. But I full of thoughts and trouble touching 
the issue of this day; and, to comfort myself, did go to the Dog 
and drink half-a-pint of mulled sack, and in the Hall [West- 
minster] did drink a dram of brandy at Mrs. Hewlett's; and 
with the warmth of this did find myself in better order as to 
courage, truly. So we all up to the lobby; and, between eleven 
or twelve o'clock, were called in, with the mace before us, into 
the House, where a mighty full House : and we stood at the bar, 
namely, Brouncker, Sir J. Minnes, Sir T. Harvey, and myself, 
W. Pen being in the House, as a Member. I perceive the whole 
House was full of expectation of our defence what it would be, 
and with great prejudice. After tne Speaker had told us the 
dissatisfaction of the House, and read the Report of the Committee, 
I began our defence most acceptably and smoothly, and continued 
at it without any hesitation or losse, but with full scope, and all 
my reason free about me, as if it had been at my own table, from 
that time till passed three in the afternoon; and so ended, with- 
out any interruption from the Speaker; but we withdrew. And 
there all my Fellow-Officers, and all the world that was within 
hearing, did congratulate me, and cry up my speech as the best 
thing they ever heard; and my Fellow-Officers were overjoyed 
in it; and we were called in again by and by to answer only 
one question, touching our paying tickets to ticket-mongers; 
and so out; and we were in hopes to have had a vote this day 
in our favour, and so the generality of the House was; but my 
speech, being so long, many had gone out to dinner and come 
in again half-drunk; and then there are two or three that are 



EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY 



35 



professed enemies to us and every body else; among others, 
Sir T. Littleton, Sir Thomas Lee, Mr. Wiles, the coxcomb whom 
I saw heretofore at the cock-fighting, and a few others; I say, 
these did rise up and speak against the coming to a vote now, 
the House not being full, by reason of several being at dinner, 
but most because that the House was to attend the King this 
afternoon, about the business of religion, wherein they pray 
him to put in force all the laws against Nonconformists and 
Papists ; and this prevented it, so that they put it off to to-morrow 
come se'nnight. However, it is plain we have got great ground, 
and every body says I have got the most honour that any could 
have had opportunity of getting; and so our hearts mightily 
overjoyed at this success. We all to dinner to my Lord 
Brouncker's — that is to say, myself, T. Harvey, and W. Pen, and 
there dined; and thence with Sir Anthony Morgan, who is an 
acquaintance of Brouncker's, a very wise man, we after dinner 
to the King's house, and there saw part of ''The Discontented 
Colonel." To my wife, whom W. Hewer had told of my success, 
and she overjoyed; and, after talking awhile, I betimes to bed, 
having had no quiet rest a good while. 

6th. Up betimes, and with Sir D. Gauden to Sir W. Coventry's 
chamber: where the fir^t word he said to me was, ''Good-morrow, 
Mr. Pepys, that must be Speaker of the Parliament-house : " 
and did protest I had got honour for ever in Parliament. He 
said that his brother, that sat by him, admires me; and another 
gentleman said that I could not get less than ;^iooo a-year, if I 
would put on a gown and plead at the Chancery-bar; but, what 
pleases me most, he tells me that the Solicitor-General did pro- 
test that he thought I spoke the best of any man in England. 
After several talks with him alone touching his own businesses, 
he carried me to White Hall, and there parted; and I to the 
Duke of York's lodgings, and find him going to the Park, it be- 
ing a very fine morning, and I after him ; and, as soon as he saw 
me, he told me, with great satisfaction, that I had converted a 
great many yesterday, and did, with great praise of me, go on 
with the discourse with me. And, by and by, overtaking the 
King, the King and Duke of York came to me both; and he 
said, "Mr. Pepys, I am very glad of your success yesterday;" 



36 SAMUEL PEPYS 

and fell to talk of my well speaking ; and many of the Lords 
there. My Lord Barkeley did cry me up for what they had 
heard of it; and others, ParKament-men there, about the King, 
did say that they never heard such a speech in their lives de- 
livered in that manner. Progers, of the Bedchamber, swore to 
me afterwards before Brouncker, in the afternoon, that he did 
tell the King that he thought I might match the Solicitor-General. 
Every body that saw me almost came to me, as Joseph William- 
son and others, with such eulogys as cannot be expressed. 
From thence I went to Westminster Hall, where I met Mr. 
G. Montagu, who came to me and kissed me, and told me 
that he had often heretofore kissed my hands, but now he 
would kiss my lips: protesting that I was another Cicero, 
and said, all the world said the same of me. Mr. Ash- 
burnham, and every creature I met there of the Parhament, 
or that knew any thing of the Parliament's actings, did salute 
me with this honour : — Mr. Godolphin ; — Mr. Sands, who 
swore he would go twenty miles, at any time, to hear the like 
again, and that he never saw so many sit four hours together to 
hear any man in his life as there did to hear me. Mr. Chichly, — 
Sir John Duncomb, — and everybody do say that the kingdom 
will ring of my abilities, and that I have, done myself right for 
my whole life: and so Captain Cocke, and others of my friends, 
say that no man had ever such an opportunity of making his 
abihties known; and, that I may cite all at once, Mr. Lieutenant 
of the Tower did tell me that Mr. Vaughan did protest to him, 
and that, in his hearing, he said so to the Duke of Albemarle, 
and afterwards to Sir W. Coventry, that he had sat twenty-six 
years in Parliament, and never heard such a speech there before : 
for which the Lord God make me thankful ! and that I may 
make use of it, not to pride and vain-glory, but that, now I have 
this esteem, I may do nothing that may lessen it ! I spent the 
morning thus walking in the Hall, being complimented by every- 
body with admiration: and at noon stepped into the Legg with 
Sir William Warren, who was in the Hall, and there talked about 
a little of his business, and thence into the Hall a little more, 
and so with him by coach as far as the Temple almost, and there 
'light, to follow my Lord Brouncker's coach, which I spied, and 



EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY 



37 



SO to Madam Williams's, where I overtook him, and agreed upon 
meeting this afternoon. To White Hall, to wait on the Duke of 
York, where he again, and all the company magnified me, and 
several in the Gallery: among others, my Lord Gerard, who 
never knew me before, nor spoke to me, desires his being better 
acquainted with me; and [said] that, at table where he was, he 
never heard so much said of any man as of me, in his whole Hfe. 



May i6th, 1668. Up; and to the Office, where we sat all 
the morning; and at noon, home with my people to dinner; 
and thence to the Office all the afternoon, till, my eyes weary, I 
did go forth by coach to the King's playhouse, and there saw the 
best part of "The Sea Voyage,"^ where Knipp did her part of 
sorrow very well. I afterwards to her house; but she did not 
come presently home; and there I did kiss her maid, who is so 
mighty belle ; and I to my tailor's, and to buy me a belt for 
my new suit against to-morrow; and so home, and there to my 
Office, and afterwards late walking in the garden; and so home 
to supper, and to bed, after Nell's cutting of my hair close, the 
weather being very hot. 



April 30th, 1669. Up, and by coach to the coachmaker's: 
and there I do find a great many ladies sitting in the body of a 
coach that must be ended by to-morrow: they were my Lady 
Marquess of Winchester, Bellassis, and other great ladies, eating 
of bread and butter, and drinking ale. I to my coach, which 
is silvered over, but no varnish yet laid on, so I put it in a way 
of doing; and myself about other business, and particularly 
to see Sir W. Coventry, with whom I talked a good while to my 
great content; and so to other places — among others, to my 
tailor's: and then to the beltmaker's, where my belt cost me 
555. of the colour of my new suit; and here, understanding that 
the mistress of the house, an oldish woman in a hat, hath some 
water good for the eyes, she did dress me, making my eyes smart 
most horribly, and did give me a little glass of it, which I will 

1 A comedy, by Beaumont and Fletcher. 



38 SAMUEL PEPYS 

use, and hope it will do me good. So to the cutler's, and there 
did give Tom, who was with me all day, a sword cost me 12s. 
and a belt of my owne ; and sent my own silver-hilt sword a-gild- 
ing against to-morrow. This morning I did visit Mr. Olden- 
burgh, and did see the instrument for perspective made by Dr. 
Wren, of which I have one making by Browne ; and the sight of 
this do please me mightily. At noon my wife came to me at 
my tailor's, and I sent her home, and myself and Tom dined at 
Hercules Pillars; and so about our business again, and partic- 
ularly to Lilly's, the varnisher, about my prints, whereof some 
of them are pasted upon the boards, and to my full content. 
Thence to the frame-maker's, one Norris, in Long Acre, who 
showed me several forms of frames, which were pretty, in little 
bits of mouldings, to choose patterns by. This done, I to my 
coachmaker's, and there vexed to see nothing yet done to my 
coach, at three in the afternoon ; but I set it in doing, and stood 
by till eight at night, and saw the painter varnish it, which is 
pretty to see how every doing it over do make it more and more 
yellow : and it dries as fast in the sun as it can be laid on almost ; 
and most coaches are, now-a-days, done so, and it is very pretty 
when laid on well, and not too pale, as some are, even to show 
the silver. Here I did make the workmen drink, and saw my 
coach cleaned and oyled ; and, staying among poor people there 
in the ally, did hear them call their fat child Punch, which pleased 
me mightily, that word being become a word of common use 
for all that is thick and short. ^ At night home, and there find 
my wife hath been making herself clean against to-morrow; 
and, late as it was, I did send my coachman and horses to fetch 
home the coach to-night, and so we to supper, myself most weary 
with walking and standing so much, to see all things fine against 
to-morrow, and so to bed. Meeting with Mr. Sheres, to several 
places, and, among others, to buy a perriwig, but I bought none ; 
and also to Dancre's, where he was about my picture of Windsor 
which is mighty pretty, and so will the prospect of Rome be. 



1 ^^ Puncheon, the vessel, Fr. poingon, perhaps so called from the pointed form 
of the staves; the vessel bellying out in the middle, and tapering towards each 
end: and hence punch (i.e., the large belly) became applied, as Pepys records, 
to anything thick or short." — Richardson's Dictionary. 



EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY 39 

May I St. Up betimes. Called by my tailor, and there first 
put on a summer suit this year; but it was not my fine one of 
flowered tabby vest, and coloured camelott tunique, because it 
was too fine with the gold lace at the bands, that I was afraid 
to be seen in it; but put on the stuff suit I made the last year, 
which is now repaired; and so did go to the Office in it, and 
sat all the morning, the day looking as if it would be fowle. At 
noon home to dinner, and there find my wife extraordinary fine, 
with her flowered tabby gown that she made two years ago, 
now laced exceeding pretty; and, indeed, was fine all over; 
and mighty earnest to go, though the day was very lowering; 
and she would have me put on my fine suit, which I did. And 
so anon we went alone through the town with our new liveries 
of serge, and the horses' manes and tails tied with red ribbons, 
and the standards gilt with varnish, and all clean, and green 
reines, that people did mightily look upon us; and, the truth is, 
I did not see any coach more pretty, though more gay, than 
cur's, all the day. But we set out, out of humour — I because 
Betty, whom I expected, was not come to go with us; and my 
wife that I would sit on the same seat with her, which she likes 
not, being so fine : and she then expected to meet Sheres, w^hich 
we did in the Pell Mell, and, against my will, I was forced to take 
him into the coach, but was sullen all day almost, and little com- 
plaisant: the day being unpleasing, though the Park full of 
coaches, but dusty, and windy, and cold, and now and then a 
little dribbling of rain; and, what made it worse, there were so 
many hackney-coaches as spoiled the sight of the gentlemen's; 
and so we had little pleasure. But here was W. B atelier and his 
sister in a borrowed coach by themselves, and I took them and 
we to the lodge; and at the door did give them a syllabub, and 
other things, cost me 125., and pretty merry. And so back to 
the coaches, and there till the evening, and then home, leaving 
Mr. Sheres at St. James's Gate, where he took leave of us for 
altogether, he being this night to set out for Portsmouth post, in 
his way to Tangier, which troubled my wife mightily, who is 
mighty, though not, I think, too fond of him. 



40 JONATHAN SWIFT 

JONATHAN SWIFT 

EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL TO STELLA 

[From the Journal to Stella. Written 1710-1713; published in part 1766, 
1768; complete 1784. Edited by G. A. Aitken, Methuen & Co., London, 
1 901. 

Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745), dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin, and satirist; 
cousin of Dryden and son of Jonathan Swift by Abigail (Erick) of Leicester; 
born at Dublin after his father's death; grandson of Thomas Swift, the 
well-known royalist vicar of Goodrich, who was descended from a York- 
shire family, a member of which, 'Cavaliero' Swifte, was created Baron Car- 
lingford, 1627; educated at Kilkenny grammar school, where Congreve was 
a schoolfellow, and at Trinity College, Dublin, 1682; neglected his studies, 
showed an impatience of restraint, was publicly censured for offences against 
discipline, and only obtained his degree by the * special grace ' ; attributed 
his recklessness himself to the neglect of his family, for whom he felt little 
regard; joined his mother at Leicester on the troubles which followed the 
expulsion of James II; admitted into the household of Sir William Temple, 
who had known his uncle Godwin, c. 1692, where he acted as his secretary; 
introduced to William III and sent by Temple to him, to convince him of 
the necessity for triennial parliaments, 1693; wrote pindarics, one being 
printed in the 'Athenian Mercury,' 1692, which, according to Dr. Johnson, 
provoked Dryden's remark, 'Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet'; chafed 
at his position of dependence, and was indignant at Temple's delay in pro- 
curing him preferment; left Temple's service, returned to Ireland, was 
ordained, 1694, and was given the small prebend of Kilroot; returned to 
Temple at Moor Park, 1696; read deeply, mostly classics and history, and 
edited Temple's correspondence; wrote (1697) 'The Battle of the Books,' 
which was published in 1704, together with 'The Tale of a Tub,' his famous 
and powerful satire of theological shams and pedantry; met 'Stella,' Esther 
Johnson [q. v.], who was an inmate of Temple's family at the time; went 
again to Ireland on the death of Temple, 1699; given a prebend in St. 
Patrick's, Dublin, and Laracor, with other livings; made frequent visits to 
Dublin and London; D.D.Dublin, 1701; wrote his ' Discourse on the Dis- 
sensions in Athens and Rome' with reference to the impeachment of the 
whig lords, 1701; in his visit to London, 1705 and 1707, became acquainted 
with Addison, Steele, Congreve, and Halifax; entrusted (1707) with a mis- 
sion to obtain the grant of Queen Anne's bounty for Ireland; wrote some 
pamphlets on religious or church subjects; published 'Letter on the Sacra- 
mental Test,' 1708, an attack on the Irish presbyterians which, though 
anonymous, injured him with the whigs; in disgust at the whig alliance 
with dissent, ultimately went over to the tories on his next visit to England; 
1 7 10; attacked the whig ministers in pamphlets, in the ' Examiner,' Novem- 
ber i7ioto June 1711, and wrote the ' Conduct of theAllies,' 1711; became 
dean of St. Patrick's, 1713; had already commenced the 'Journal to Stella,' 
had become intimate with the tory ministers, and had used his influence in 
helping young and impoverished authors, including Pope and Steele; re- 
turned to England, 1713, to reconcile Bolingbroke and Harley, but in vain; 



EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL TO STELLA 41 

wrote more pamphlets, notably * The Public Spirit of the Whigs considered,' 
1 714, in reply to Steele's ' Crisis,' but at length gave up all for lost and retired 
to the country; left for Ireland, 1715, after the fall of the ministry and the 
death of Queen Anne ; his marriage to Stella, an incident which still remains 
unproven, and also his final rupture with 'Vanessa' (Miss Vanhomrigh, 
whose acquaintance he had made in London), supposed to have taken place 
about this time; his rupture with Vanessa the cause of her death, before 
which she entrusted to her executors his poem ' Cadenus and Vanessa,' which 
relates the story of their love affair; though always contemptuous of the 
Irish, was led, by his personal antipathies to the whigs, to acquire a sense 
of their unfair dealings with Ireland; successfully prevented the introduc- 
tion of ' Wood's Half-pence ' into Ireland by his famous 'Drapier Letters,' 1724; 
came to England, 1726, visited Pope and Gay, and dined with Walpole, 
for whose behoof he afterwards wrote a letter complaining of the treatment 
of Ireland, which had, however, no effect on the minister; broke with Wal- 
pole in consequence; was introduced to Queen Caroline, but gained nothing 
by it; published ' Gulliver's Travels,' 1726; made his last visit to England, 
1727, when the death of George I created for a moment hopes of dislodg- 
ing Walpole; wrote some of his most famous tracts and some of his most 
characteristic poems during these last years in Ireland; kept up his cor- 
respondence with Bolingbroke, Pope, Gay, and Arbuthnot, and though 
remaining aloof from Dublin society, maintained good relations with Lord 
Carteret, the lord-lieutenant; attracted to himself a small circle of friends, 
and was adored by the people; set up a monument to Schomberg in the 
cathedral at his own expense, spent a third of his income on charities, and 
saved up another third to found a charitable institution at his death, St. 
Patrick's Hospital (opened, 1757); symptoms of the illness from which he 
appears to have suffered all his life very marked, c. 1738; buried by the 
side of Stella, in St. Patrick's, Dublin, his own famous inscription, *ubi 
sseva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit,' being inscribed on his tomb. 
Dr. Johnson, Macaulay, and Thackeray, among many other writers, were 
alienated by his ferocity, which was, however, the result of noble qualities 
soured by hard experience. His indignation at oppression and unfairness 
was genuine. His political writings are founded on common sense pure 
and simple, and he had no party bias. His works, with the exception of 
the letter upon the correction of the language, 171 2, were all anonymous, 
and for only one, 'Gulliver's Travels,' did he receive any payment (200/.). 
A large number of publications appear to have been attributed to him by dif- 
ferent editors without sufi&cient authority. — Index and Epitome of D.N. B. 

"Swift has left one monument, which he would not himself have recog- 
nized as of any literary value, but which the world, most assuredly, will never 
allow to die. This is the Journal to Stella: a continuous series of letters in 
which he depicts, for her who, in all his busy and bustling surroundings, 
ever occupied the place closest to his heart, the scenes in which he moved. 
Half the charm of the Journal lies in its absolute ease and unconsciousness 
of effort; in the humour alternately playful and sarcastic, in the pathos and 
the anger, in the fierce self-assertion which would not conceal itself, in the 
fidelity which made his genius the willing servant of smaller men who played 
the part of his patrons — in a word, in all those varying traits which reflect 
Swift's character so exactly, and which let us see him at once in his pride, 
and in his tenderness, in his power, and in his weakness. We see him as the 



*^ 



42 JONATHAN SWIFT 

confidant of ministers, and the dispenser of patronage: as the frequenter of 
the Court, and the companion of the great, and, again, as the boon companion 
of the victors and the vanquished in the world of letters; as the friend of 
Addison, of Congreve, of Atterbury, of Arbuthnot, of Pope ; as the protector 
of Parnell and others more obscure who had fallen into misfortune; and as 
the fierce combatant, who enjoyed recounting his triumphs to the one listener, 
so far removed, for whom all that affected him was the first interest of life." 
— Sir Henry Craik, Selections from Swift, Vol. I, pp. 19-20. 1892. 

"I know of nothing more manly, more tender, more exquisitely touching, 
than some of these brief notes, written in what Swift calls 'his little language ' 
in his journal to Stella. He writes to her night and morning often. He 
never sends away a letter to her but he begins a new one on the same day. 
He can't bear to let go her kind little hand, as it were. He knows that she 
is thinking of him, and longing for him far away in Dublin yonder. He takes 
her letters from under his pillow and talks to them, familiarly, paternally, 
with fond epithets and pretty caresses — as he would to the sweet and artless 
creature who loved him. 'Stay,' he writes one morning — it is the 14th of 
December, 1710 — 'Stay, I will answer some of your letter this morning in 
bed. Let me see. Come and appear, little letter ! Here I am, says he, 
and what say you to Stella this morning fresh and fasting? And can Stella 
read this writing without hurting her dear eyes ? ' he goes on, after more kind 
prattle and fond whispering. The dear eyes shine clearly upon him then — 
the good angel of his life is with him and blessing him." — William Make- 
peace Thackeray, "Swift," in The English Humourists of the Eighteenth 
Century. 1853.] 

London, Oct. 22, 17 10. I was this morning with Mr. Lewis, 
the under-secretary to Lord Dartmouth, two hours, talking politics, 
and contriving to keep Steele in his office of stamped paper: he 
has lost his place of Gazetteer, three hundred pounds a year, for 
writing a Tatler,^ some months ago, against Mr. Harley,^ who gave 
it him at first, and raised the salary from sixty to three hundred 
pounds. This was devilish ungrateful; and Lewis was teUing 
me the particulars : but I had a hint given me, that I might save 
him in the other employment: and leave was given me to clear 
matters with Steele. Well, I dined with Sir Matthew Dudley, 
and in the evening went to sit with Mr. Addison, and offer the 
matter at distance to him, as the discreeter person; but found 
party ^ had so possessed him, that he talked as if he suspected me, 
and would not fall in with anything I said. So I stopped short 
in my overture, and we parted very drily; and I shall say nothing 

^ No. 193. 

2 Robert Harley: raised to the peerage in May, 17 it, as Earl of Oxford, and 
made Lord High Treasurer. 

^ Swift was a Tory; Addison and Steele were Whigs. For the life of Sir Rich- 
ard Steele see post, p. 425, 



EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL TO STELLA 



43 



to Steele, and let them do as they will; but, if things stand as they 
are, he will certainly lose it, unless I save him; and therefore I 
will not speak to him, that I may not report to his disadvantage. 
Is not this vexatious? and is there so much in the proverb of 
proferred service? When shall I grow wise? I endeavour to 
act in the most exact points of honour and conscience; and my 
nearest friends will not understand it so. What must a man 
expect from his enemies? This would vex me, but it shall not; 
and so I bid you good-night, etc. 

23. I know 'tis neither wit nor diversion to tell you every day 
where I dine ; neither do I write it to fill my letter ; but I fancy 
I shall, some time or other, have the curiosity of seeing some 
particulars how I passed my life when I was absent from MD ^ 
this time; and so I tell you now that I dined to-day at Moles- 
worth's, the Florence Envoy, then went to the Coffee-house, where 
I behaved myself coldly enough to Mr. Addison, and so came home 
to scribble. We dine together to-morrow and next day by invi- 
tation; but I shall alter my behaviour to him, till he begs my 
pardon, or else we shall grow bare acquaintance. I am weary of 
friends; and friendships are all monsters, but MD's. 

2lf ^ 2lf Sk sic ^ ^ 

March 7, 1710-11. . . . And so you say that Stella is a pretty 
girl; and so she be, and methinks I see her just now as handsome 
as the day is long. Do you know what ? when I am writing in our 
language, I make up my mouth just as if I was speaking it. I 
caught myself at it just now. And I suppose Dingley is so fair 
^nd so fresh as a lass in May, and has her health, and no spleen. — 
In your account you sent do you reckon as usual from the ist of 
November was twelvemonth ? Poor Stella, will not Dingley leave 
her a Httle daylight to write to Presto? Well, well, we'll have 
dayhght shortly, spite of her teeth; and zoo must cly Lele and 

1 The 'little language' which Swift used when writing to Stella (Esther 
Johnson) was the language he employed when playing with her as a little child at 
Moor Park. It is marked chiefly by such changes of letters {e.g., I for n, or n for /) 
as a child makes when learning to speak. Swift is Presto, and Pdfr, sometimes 
Podefar (perhaps Poor dear foolish rogue). Stella is Ppt (Poor pretty thing). 
MD (my dears) usually stands for both Stella and Mrs. Dingley, but sometimes 
for Stella alone. Mrs. Dingley is indicated by ME (Madame Elderly). The 
letters FW may mean Farewell, or Foolish Wenches. Lele seems to be There, 
there, and sometimes Truly. — G. A. Aitken. 



44 JONATHAN SWIFT 

Hele, and Hele aden. Must loo mimitate Pdfr, pay? Iss, and so 
la shall. And so lele's fol ee rettle. Dood-mollow. — At night, 
Mrs. Barton sent this morning to invite me to dinner; and there I 
dined, just in that genteel manner that MD used when they would 
treat some better sort of body than usual. 

8. O dear MD, my heart is almost broken. You will hear the 
thing before this comes to you. I writ a full account of it this night 
to the Archbishop of Dublin ; and the Dean may tell you the par- 
ticulars from the Archbishop. I was in a sorry way to write, but 
thought it might be proper to send a true account of the fact ; for 
you will hear a thousand lying circumstances. It is of Mr. Har- 
ley's being stabbed this afternoon, at three o'clock, at a Committee 
of the Council. I was playing Lady Catharine Morris's cards, 
where I dined, when young Arundel came in with the story. I 
ran away immediately to the Secretary ^ which was in my way: 
no one was at home. I met Mrs. St. John in her chair; she had 
heard it imperfectly. I took a chair to Mr. Harley, who was 
asleep, and they hope in no danger; but he had been out of order, 
and was so when he came abroad to-day, and it may put him in a 
fever : I am in mortal pain for him. That desperate French vil- 
lain, Marquis de Guiscard, stabbed Mr. Harley. Guiscard was 
taken up by Mr. Secretary St. John's warrant for high treason, 
and brought before the Lords to be examined; there he stabbed 
Mr. Harley. I have told all the particulars already to the Arch- 
bishop. I have now, at nine, sent again, and they tell me he is 
in a fair way. Pray pardon my distraction; I now think of all 
his kindness to me. — The poor creature now Hes stabbed in his 
bed by a desperate French Popish villain. Good-night, and God 
preserve you both, and pity me ; I want it. 

9. Morning; seven, in bed. Patrick is just come from Mr. 
Harley's. He slept well till four ; the surgeon sat up with him ; he 
is asleep again: he felt a pain in his wound when he waked: 
they apprehend him in no danger. This account the surgeon 
left with the porter, to tell people that send. Pray God preserve 
him. I am rising, and going to Mr. Secretary St. John. They 
say Guiscard will die with the wounds Mr. St. John and the rest 

^ The Secretary of State, Henry St. John, created Viscount Bolingbroke^ 
in 1712. 



EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL TO STELLA 



45 



gave him. I shall tell you more at night. — Night. Mr. Harley 
still continues on the mending hand ; but he rested ill last night, 
and felt pain. I was early with the Secretary this morning, and 
I dined with him, and he told me several particularities of this 
accident, too long to relate now. Mr. Harley is still mending this 
evening, but not at all out of danger; and till then I can have no 
peace. Good-night, etc., and pity Presto. 

* %|* •!* ^1» ^U «b «!• 

•J* *I* *|* *J» ^% a^ 

Mar. i6. I have made but Httle progress in this letter for so 
many days, thanks to Guiscard and Mr. Harley ; and it would be 
endless to tell you all the particulars of that odious fact. I do not 
yet hear that Guiscard is dead, but they say 'tis impossible he 
should recover. I walked too much yesterday for a man with a 
broken shin; to-day I rested, and went no farther than Mrs. 
Vanhomrigh's,^ where I dined; and Lady Betty Butler coming 
in about six, I was forced in good manners to sit with her till nine ; 
then I came home, and Mr. Ford came in to visit my shin, and sat 
with me till eleven: so I have been very idle and naughty. It 
vexes me to the pluck that I should lose walking this delicious day. 
Have you seen the Spectator ^ yet, a paper that comes out every 
day? 'Tis written by Mr. Steele, who seems to have gathered 
new life, and have a new fund of wit; it is the same nature as his 
Tatlers, and they have all of them had something pretty. I beheve 
Addison and he club. I never see them; and I plainly told Mr. 
Harley and Mr. St. John, ten days ago, before my Lord Keeper 
and Lord Rivers, that I had been foolish enough to spend my 
credit with them in favour of Addison and Steele; but that I 
would engage and promise never to say one word in their behalf, 
having been used so ill for what I had already done. — So, now 
I am got into the way of prating again, there will be no quiet for 
me. 

When Presto begins to prate, 
Give him a rap upon the pate. 

O Lord, how I blot ! it is time to leave off, etc. 



1 Mrs. Vanhomrigh was the mother of Esther Vanhomrigh, "Vanessa," the 
heroine of Swift's poem Cadenus and Vanessa. 

2 The first nimiber of the Spectator appeared on March i, 17 ii. 



46 JONATHAN SWIFT 

Windsor, July 29, 17 11. I was at Court and church to-day, 
as I was this day se'ennight : I generally am acquainted with about 
thirty in the drawing-room, and I am so proud I make all the lords 
come up to me : one passes half an hour pleasant enough. We 
had a dunce to preach before the Queen to-day, which often hap- 
pens. Windsor is a delicious situation, but the town is scoundrel. 
I have this morning got the Gazette for Ben Tooke and one Barber 
a printer ; it will be about three hundred pounds a year between 
them. The other fellow was printer of the Examiner, which is 
now laid down. I dined with the Secretary : we were a dozen in 
all, three Scotch lords, and Lord Peterborow. The Duke of Ham- 
ilton would needs be witty, and hold up my train as I walked up- 
stairs. It is an ill circumstance that on Sundays much company 
always meet at the great tables. Lord Treasurer told at Court 
what I said to Mr. Secretary on this occasion. The Secretary 
showed me his bill of fare, to encourage me to dine with him. 
^'Poh," said I, "show me a bill of company, for I value not your 
dinner." See how this is all blotted, I can write no more here, 
but to tell you I love MD dearly, and God bless them. 

Windsor, Sept. 23, 171 1. The Secretary did not come last night, 
but at three this afternoon. I have not seen him yet, but I verily 
think they are contriving a peace as fast as they can, without 
which it will be impossible to subsist. The Queen was at church 
to-day, but was carried in a chair. I and Mr. Lewis dined pri- 
vately with Mr. Lowman, Clerk of the Kitchen. I was to see Lord 
Keeper this morning, and told him the jest of the maids of hon- 
our; and Lord Treasurer had it last night. That rogue Arbuth- 
not ^ puts it all upon me. The Court was very full to-day. I 
expected Lord Treasurer would have invited me to supper; but 
he only bowed to me ; and we had no discourse in the drawing- 
room. It is now seven at night, and I am at home ; and I hope 
Lord Treasurer will not send for me to supper: if he does not, 
I will reproach him ; and he will pretend to chide me for not com- 
ing. — So farewell till I go to bed, for I am going to be busy. — 

^ Dr. John Arbuthnot, Physician in Ordinary to Queen Anne. To him Pope 
addressed his famous Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. See post, p. 236. 



EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL TO STELLA 47 

It is now past ten, and I went down to ask the servants about Mr. 
Secretary : they tell me the Queen is yet at the Council, and that 
she went to supper, and came out to the Council afterwards. It 
is certain they are managing a peace. I will go to bed, and there 
is an end. — It is now eleven, and a messenger is come from Lord 
Treasurer to sup with them; but I have excused myself, and am 
glad I am in bed; for else I should sit up till two, and drink till 
I was hot. Now I'll go sleep. 

******* 
London, Dec. 30, 1711. I writ the Dean and you a lie yester- 
day ; for the Duke of Somerset is not yet turned out. I was to-day 
at Court, and resolved to be very civil to the Whigs ; but saw few 
there. When I was in the bed-chamber talking to Lord Rochester, 
he went up to Lady Burlington, who asked him who I was ; and 
Lady Sunderland and she whispered about me : I desired Lord 
Rochester to tell Lady Sunderland I doubted she was not as much 
in love with me as I was with her; but he would not deliver my 
message. The Duchess of Shrewsbury came running up to me, 
and clapped her fan up to hide us from company, and we gave one 
another joy of this change ; but sighed when we reflected on the 
Somerset family not being out. The Secretary and I, and brother 
Bathurst, and Lord Windsor, dined with the Duke of Ormond. 
Bathurst and Windsor are to be two of the new lords. ^ I desired 
my Lord Radnor's brother, at Court to-day, to let my lord know 
I would call on him at six, which I did, and was arguing with him 
three hours to bring him over to us, and I spoke so closely that I 
believe he will be tractable ; but he is a scoundrel, and though I 
said I only talked for my love to him, I told a lie ; for I did not care 
if he were hanged: but everyone gained over is of consequence. 
The Duke of Marlborough was at Court to-day, and nobody hardly 
took notice of him. Masham's being a lord begins to take wind : 
nothing at Court can be kept a secret. Wednesday will be a great 
day : you shall know more. 

******* 
London, Nov. 15, 1712. Before this comes to your hands, you 
will have heard of the most terrible accident that hath almost ever 

1 Twelve new peers were created to secure a Tory majority in the House of Lords. 



48 JONATHAN SWIFT 

happened. This morning, at eight, my man brought me word that 
the Duke of Hamilton had fought with Lord Mohun,^ and killed 
him, and was brought home wounded.^ I immediately sent him 
to the Duke's house, in St. James's Square ; but the porter could 
hardly answer for tears, and a great rabble was about the house. 
In short, they fought at seven this morning. The dog Mohun was 
killed on the spot; and while the Duke was over him, Mohun 
shortening his sword, stabbed him in at the shoulder to the heart. 
The Duke was helped toward the cake-house by the Ring in Hyde 
Park (where they fought), and died on the grass, before he could 
reach the house ; and was brought home in his coach by eight, 
while the poor Duchess was asleep. Maccartney, and one Ham- 
ilton, were the seconds, who fought likewise, and are both fled. 
I am told that a footman of Lord Mohun's stabbed the Duke of 
Hamilton ; and some say Maccartney did so too. Mohun gave 
the affront, and yet sent the challenge. I am infinitely concerned 
for the poor Duke, who was a frank, honest, good-natured man. 
I loved him very well, and I think he loved me better. He had 
the greatest mind in the world to have me go with him to France, 
but durst not tell it me; and those he did, said I could not be 
spared, which was true. They have removed the poor Duchess 
to a lodging in the neighbourhood, where I have been with her two 
hours, and am just come away. I never saw so melancholy a 
scene ; for indeed all reasons for real grief belong to her; nor is it 
possible for anybody to be a greater loser in all regards. She has 
moved my very soul. The lodging was inconvenient, and they 
would have removed her to another; but I would not suffer it, 
because it had no room backward, and she must have been tor- 
tured with the noise of the Grub Street screamers mentionpng] 
her husband's murder to her ears. 

1 believe you have heard the story of my escape, in opening the 
bandbox sent to Lord Treasurer.^ The prints have told a thou- 
sand Hes of it; but at last we gave them a true account of it at 

^ Charles Mohun, fifth Baron Mohun, had been twice arraigned of murder, but 
acquitted. He had taken part in many duels. See Thackeray's Henry Esmond. 

2 " This duel between the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Mohun, who had married 
nieces of Lord Macclesfield, had its origin in a protracted dispute about some 
property. Tory writers suggested that the duel was a Whig conspiracy to get 
rid of the Duke of Hamilton (Examiner, Nov. 20, 1712)." — Aitken. 

^ The story is told in the Tory Postboy of November 11 to 13. 



EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL TO STELLA 



49 



length, printed in the evening; only I would not suffer them to 
name me, having been so often named before, and teased to death 
with questions. I wonder how I came to have so much presence 
of mind, which is usually not my talent; but so it pleased God, 
and I saved myself and him; for there was a bullet apiece. A 
gentleman told me that if I had been killed, the Whigs would have 
called it a judgment, because the barrels were of inkhorns, with 
which I had done them so much mischief. There was a pure Grub 
Street of it, full of lies and inconsistencies. I do not like these 
things at all, and I wish myself more and more among my willows. 
There is a devilish spirit among people, and the Ministry must 
exert themselves, or sink. Nite dee sollahs, I'll go seep. 

i6. I thought to have finished this yesterday; but was too much 
disturbed. I sent a letter early this morning to Lady Masham,^ 
to beg her to write some comforting words to the poor Duchess. 
I dined to- [day] with Lady Masham at Kensington, where she is 
expecting these two months to lie in. She has promised me to get 
the Queen to write to the Duchess kindly on this occasion; and 
to-morrow I will beg Lord Treasurer to visit and comfort her. 
I have been with her two hours again, and find her worse: her 
violences not so frequent, but her melancholy more formal and 
settled. She has abundance of wit and spirit; about thirty-three 
years old; handsome and airy, and seldom spared anybody that 
gave her the least provocation; by which she had many enemies 
and few friends. Lady Orkney, her sister-in-law, is come to town 
on this occasion, and has been to see her, and behaved herself with 
great humanity. They have been always very ill together, and the 
poor Duchess could not have patience when people told her I went 
often to Lady Orkney's. But I am resolved to make them friends ; 
for the Duchess is now no more the object of envy, and must learn 
humility from the severest master. Affliction. I design to make 
the Ministry put out a proclamation (if it can be found proper) 
against that villain Maccartney. What shall we do with these 
murderers? I cannot end this letter to-night, and there is no 
occasion; for I cannot send it till Tuesday, and the crowner's 
inquest on the Duke's body is to be to-morrow, and I shall know 

1 Abigail Hill, afterwards Lady Masham, had supplanted the Duchess of Marl- 
borough as the Queen's favorite. She was a cousin of Harley, the Lord Treasurer. 

E 



50 JONATHAN SWIFT 

more. But what care oo for all this ? Iss, poo MD im sorry for 
poo Pdfr's friends; and this is a very surprising event. 'Tis 
late, and I'll go to bed. This looks like journals. Nite. 

17. I was to-day at noon with the Duchess of Hamilton again, 
after I had been with Lady Orkney, and charged her to be kind to 
her sister in her affliction. The Duchess told me Lady Orkney 
had been with her, and that she did not treat her as gently as she 
ought. They hate one another, but I will try to patch it up. I 
have been drawing up a paragraph for the Postboy, to be out 
to-morrow, and as malicious as possible, and very proper for Abel 
Roper, the printer of it. I dined at Lord Treasurer's at six in the 
evening, which is his usual hour of returning from Windsor: 
he promises to visit the Duchess to-morrow, and says he has a 
message to her from the Queen. Thank God. I have stayed 
till past one with him. So nite deelest MD. 



Dec. 27, 1712. I dined to-day with General Hill, Governor of 
Dunkirk. Lady Masham and Mrs. Hill, his two sisters, were of 
the company, and there have I been sitting this evening till eleven, 
looking over others at play ; for I have left off loving play myself ; 
and I think Ppt is now a great gamester. I have a great cold on 
me, not quite at its height. I have them seldom, and therefore 
ought to be patient. I met Mr. Addison and Pastoral Philips on 
the Mall to-day, and took a turn with them ; but they both looked 
terrible dry and cold. A curse of party! And do you know 
I have taken more pains to recommend the Whig wits to the favour 
and mercy of the Ministers than any other people. Steele I have 
kept in his place. Congreve I have got to be used kindly, and 
secured. Rowe I have recommended, and got a promise of a 
place. Philips I could certainly have provided for, if he had not 
run party mad, and made me withdraw my recommendation; 
and I set Addison so right at first that he might have been em- 
ployed, and have partly secured him the place he has; yet I am 
worse used by that faction than any man. Well, go to cards, 
sollah Ppt, and dress the wine and olange, sollah MD, and I'll 
go seep. 'Tis rate. Nite MD. 

^» ^^ "^ w^ *^ ^p 



EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL TO STELLA 



51 



April 13, 1 7 13. This morning my friend, Mr. Lewis, came to 
me, and showed me an order for a warrant for the three vacant 
deaneries; but none of them to me. This was what I always 
foresaw, and received the notice of it better, I believe, than he 
expected. I bid Mr. Lewis tell Lord Treasurer that I took noth- 
ing ill of him but his not giving me timely notice, as he promised 
to do, if he found the Queen would do nothing for me. At noon, 
Lord Treasurer hearing I was in Mr. Lewis's office, came to me, 
and said many things too long to repeat. I told him I had nothing 
to do but go to Ireland immediately; for I could not, with any 
reputation, stay longer here, unless I had something honourable 
immediately given to me. We dined together at the Duke of 
Ormond's. He there told me he had stopped the warrants for 
the deans, that what was done for me might be at the same time, 
and he hoped to compass it to-night ; but I believe him not. I told 
the Duke of Ormond my intentions. He is content Sterne should 
be a bishop, and I have St. Patrick's; but I believe nothing will 
come of it, for stay I will not; and so I believe for all 00 ... ^ 

00 may see me in Dublin before April ends. I am less out of 
humour than you would imagine : and if it were not that imperti- 
nent people will condole with me, as they used to give me joy, 

1 would value it less. But I will avoid company, and muster up 
my baggage, and send them next Monday by the carrier to Chester, 
and come and see my willows, against the expectation of all the 
world. — Hat care I? Nite deelest logues, MD. 

14. I dined in the City to-day, and ordered a lodging to be got 
ready for me against I came to pack up my things ; for I will leave 
this end of the town as soon as ever the warrants for the deaneries 
are out, which are yet stopped. Lord Treasurer told Mr. Lewis 
that it should be determined to-night : and so he will for a hundred 
nights. So he said yesterday, but I value it not. My daily jour- 
nals shall be but short till I get into the City, and then I will send 
away this, and follow it myself ; and design to walk it all the way 
to Chester, my man and I, by ten miles a day. It will do my 
health a great deal of good. I shall do it in fourteen days. Nite 
dee MD. 

15. Lord Bolingbroke made me dine with him to-day; he was 

1 The words are illegible. 



52 JONATHAN SWIFT 

as good company as ever; and told me the Queen would deter- 
mine something for me to-night. The dispute is, Windsor or St. 
Patrick's. I told him I would not stay for their disputes, and he 
thought I was in the right. Lord Masham told me that Lady 
Masham is angry I have not been to see her since this business, 
and desires I will come to-morrow. Nite deelest MD. 

i6. I was this noon at Lady Masham's, who was just come from 
Kensington, where her eldest son is sick. She said much to me of 
what she had talked to the Queen and Lord Treasurer. The 
poor lady fell a shedding tears openly. She could not bear to 
think of my having St. Patrick's, etc. I was never more moved 
than to see so much friendship. I would not stay with her, but 
went and dined with Dr. Arbuthnot, with Mr. Berkeley, one of your 
Fellows, whom I have recommended to the Doctor, and to Lord 
Berkeley of Stratton. Mr. Lewis tells me that the Duke of Or- 
mond has been to-day with the Queen ; and she was content that 
Dr. Sterne should be Bishop of Dromore, and I Dean of St. Pat- 
rick's ; but then out came Lord Treasurer, and said he would not 
be satisfied but that I must be Prebend [ary] of Windsor. Thus he 
perplexes things. I expect neither; but I confess, as much as I love 
England, I am so angry at this treatment that, if I had my choice, 
I would rather have St. Patrick's. Lady Masham says she will 
speak to purpose to the Queen to-morrow. Nite, . . . dee MD. 

17. I went to dine at Lady Masham's to-day, and she was taken 
ill of a sore throat, and aguish. She spoke to the Queen last night, 
but had not much time. The Queen says she will determine to- 
morrow with Lord Treasurer. The warrants for the deaneries 
are still stopped, for fear I should be gone. Do you think any- 
think will be done ? I don't care whether it is or no. In the mean- 
time, I prepare for my journey, and see no great people, nor will 
see Lord Treasurer any more, if I go. Lord Treasurer told Mr. 
Lewis it should be done to-night; so he said five nights ago. 
Nite MD. 

18. This morning Mr. Lewis sent me word that Lord Treasurer 
told him the Queen would determine at noon. At three Lord 
Treasurer sent to me to come to his lodgings at St. James's, and told 
me the Queen was at last resolved that Dr. Sterne should be Bishop 
of Dromore, and I Dean of St. Patrick's ; and that Sterne's warrant 



EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL TO STELLA 53 

should be drawn immediately. You know the deanery is in the 
Duke of Ormond's gift; but this is concerted between the Queen, 
Lord Treasurer, and the Duke of Ormond, to make room for me. 
I do not know whether it will yet be done; some unlucky accident 
may yet come. Neither can I feel joy at passing my days in Ire- 
land ; and I confess I thought the Ministry would not let me go ; 
but perhaps they can't help it. Nite MD. 

COLLEY GIBBER 

"TALKING OF HIMSELF" 

[From An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibher written by Himself 
Chap. II. 1740. Edited by R. W. Lowe, John C. Nimmo, London, 1889. 

CiBBER, Colley (1671-1757), actor and dramatist; son of Caius Gabriel 
Cibber [q. v.]; educated at Grantham school, 1682-7; served in the 
Earl of Devonshire's levy for the Prince of Orange, 1688; joined united 
companies at Theatre Royal, 1690; known as 'Mr. Colley'; played minor 
parts, 1691; failed in tragedy, but made a good impression in comedy, 
1692-4; brought out his first play, 'Love's Last Shift,' 1696; recognised 
as the leading actor of eccentric characters, 1697-173 2; brought out some 
thirty dramatic pieces, 1 697-1 748, including several smart comedies; ob- 
tained a profitable share in the management of Drury Lane, c. 171 1, and 
held it in spite of the machinations of the tories; brought out 'The Non- 
juror,' 1717, a play directed against the Jacobites; fiercely attacked by other 
writers on his appointment as poet laureate, December 1730; 'retired' 
from the stage, 1733, but reappeared at intervals till 1745; published an 
autobiography entitled 'Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, Comedian,' 
1740, two letters to Pope, 1742-4, a poor 'Character ... of Cicero,' 1747, 
and some worthless official odes; made by Pope the hero of the 'Dunciad' 
(1742). The title of the chap-book, 'Colley Cibber's Jests,' 1761, shows 
his notoriety. — Index and Epitome of D. N. B. 

"And Cibber himself is the honestest man I know, who has writ a book 
of his confessions, not so much to his credit as St. Augustine's, but full as 
true and as open. Never had impudence and vanity so faithful a professor. 
I honour him next to my Lord." — Alexander Pope, Letter to Lord Orrery, 
1742-3; Pope's Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, Vol. VIII, p. 509. 

"He was not, indeed, a very wise or lofty character — nor did he afifect 
great virtue or wisdom — but openly derided gravity, bade defiance to the 
serious pursuits of life, and honestly preferred his own lightness of heart and 
of head, to knowledge the most extensive or thought the most profound. He 
was vain even of his vanity. At the very commencement of his work, he 
avows his determination not to repress it, because it is part of himself, and 
therefore will only increase the resemblance of the picture. Rousseau did 
not more clearly lay open to the world the depths and inmost recesses of his 



54 COLLEY CIBBER 

soul, than Gibber his little foibles and minikin weaknesses. The philosopher 
dwelt not more intensely on the lone enthusiasm of his spirit, on the allevia- 
tions of his throbbing soul, on the long draughts of rapture which he eagerly 
drank in from the loveliness of the universe, than the player on his early 
aspirings for scenic applause, and all the petty triumphs and mortifications 
of his passion for the favour of the town." — Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd, 
"Gibber's Apology for His Life," Critical and Miscellaneous Writings, p. 72.] 

It often makes me smile to think how contentedly I have set 
myself down to write my own Life ; nay, and with less Concern for 
what may be said of it than I should feel were I to do the same for a 
deceased Acquaintance. This you will easily account for when 
you consider that nothing gives a Coxcomb more delight than when 
you suffer him to talk of himself ; which sweet Liberty I here enjoy 
for a whole Volume together! A Privilege which neither cou'd 
be allow'd me, nor wou'd become me to take, in the Company 
I am generally admitted to; but here, when I have all the Talk 
to myself, and have no body to interrupt or contradict me, sure, 
to say whatever I have a mind other People shou'd know of me is 
a Pleasure which none but Authors as vain as myself can conceive. 
— But to my History. 

However little worth notice the Life of a Schoolboy may be 
supposed to contain, yet, as the Passions of Men and Children have 
much the same Motives and differ very little in their Effects, unless 
where the elder Experience may be able to conceal them : As there- 
fore what arises from the Boy may possibly be a Lesson to the Man, 
I shall venture to relate a Fact or two that happen'd while I was 
still at School. 

In February, 1684-5, died King Charles II. who being the only 
King I had ever seen, I remember (young as I was) his Death made 
a strong Impression upon me, as it drew Tears from the Eyes 
of Multitudes, who looked no further into him than I did: But 
it was, then, a sort of School-Doctrine to regard our Monarch as 
a Deity; as in the former Reign it was to insist that he was ac- 
countable to this World as well as to that above him. But what, 
perhaps, gave King Charles II. this peculiar Possession of so many 
Hearts, was his affable and easy manner in conversing ; which is 
a Quality that goes farther with the greater Part of Mankind than 
many higher Virtues, which, in a Prince, might more immediately 
regard the publick Prosperity. Even his indolent Amusement 



"TALKING OF HIMSELF" 



55 



of playing with his Dogs and feeding his Ducks in St. Jameses 
Park, (which I have seen him do) made the common People adore 
him, and consequently overlook in him what, in a Prince of a 
different Temper, they might have been out of humour at. 

I cannot help remembering one more Particular in those Times, 
tho' it be quite foreign to what will follow. I was carry'd by my 
Father to the Chapel in Whitehall; where I saw the King and his 
royal Brother the then Duke of York, with him in the Closet, and 
present during the whole Divine Service. Such Dispensation, 
it seems, for his Interest, had that unhappy Prince from his real 
Religion, to assist at another to which his Heart was so utterly 
averse. — I now proceed to the Facts I promis'd to speak of. 

King Charles his Death was judg'd by our Schoolmaster a 
proper Subject to lead the Form I was in into a higher kind of 
Exercise; he therefore enjoin'd us severally to make his Funeral 
Oration: This sort of Task, so entirely new to us all, the Boys 
receiv'd with Astonishment as a Work above their Capacity; and 
tho' the Master persisted in his Command, they one and all, 
except myself, resolved to decline it. But I, Sir, who was ever 
giddily forward and thoughtless of Consequences, set myself 
roundly to work, and got through it as well as I could. I remember 
to this Hour that single Topick of his Affability (which made me 
mention it before) was the chief Motive that warm'd me into the 
Undertaking; and to shew how very foolish a Notion I had of 
Character at that time, I raised his Humanity, and Love of those 
who serv'd him, to such Height, that I imputed his Death to the 
Shock he receiv'd from the Lord Arlington's being at the point of 
Death about a Week before him. This Oration, such as it was, 
I produc'd the next Morning: All the other Boys pleaded their 
Inability, which the Master taking rather as a mark of their Mod- 
esty than their Idleness, only seem'd to punish by setting me at 
the Head of the Form: A Preferment dearly bought! Much 
happier had I been to have sunk my Performance in the general 
Modesty of declining it. A most uncomfortable Life I led among 
them for many a Day after ! I was so jeer'd, laugh'd at, and hated 
as a pragmatical Bastard (School-boys Language) who had 
betray'd the whole Form, that scarce any of 'em wou'd keep 
me company; and tho' it so far advanc'd me into the Master's 



56 COLLEY CIBBER 

Favour that he wou'd often take me from the School to give me an 
Airing with him on Horseback, while they were left to their Les- 
sons; you may be sure such envy'd Happiness did not encrease 
their Good- will to me: Notwithstanding which my Stupidity 
cou'd take no warning from their Treatment. An Accident of the 
same nature happen'd soon after, that might have frighten'd a 
Boy of a meek Spirit from attempting any thing above the lowest 
Capacity. On the 23rd of April following, being the Coronation- 
Day of the new King, the School petition'd the Master for leave 
to play; to which he agreed, provided any of the Boys would 
produce an English Ode upon that Occasion. — The very Word, 
Ode, I know makes you smile already ; and so it does me ; not only 
because it still makes so many poor Devils turn Wits upon it, but 
from a more agreeable Motive; from a Reflection of how little 
I then thought that, half a Century afterwards, I shou'd be call'd 
upon twice a year, by my Post, to make the same kind of Oblations 
to an unexceptionable Prince, the serene Happiness of whose Reign 
my halting Rhimes are still so unequal to — This, I own, is Van- 
ity without Disguise; but Haec olim meminisse juvat: The 
remembrance of the miserable prospect we had then before us, and 
have since escaped by a Revolution, is now a Pleasure which, 
without that Remembrance, I could not so heartily have enjoy'd. 
The Ode I was speaking of fell to my Lot, which in about half an 
Hour I produc'd. I cannot say it was much above the merry 
Style of Sing ! Sing the Day, and Sing the Song, in the Farce: 
Yet bad as it was, it serv'd to get the School a Play-day, and to 
make me not a little vain upon it; which last Effect so disgusted 
my Play-fellows that they left me out of the Party I had most a 
mind to be of in that Day's Recreation. But their Ingratitude 
serv'd only to increase my Vanity; for I consider'd them as so 
many beaten Tits that had just had the Mortification of seeing my 
Hack of a Pegasus come in before them. This low Passion is so 
rooted in our Nature that sometimes riper Heads cannot govern 
it. I have met with much the same silly sort of Coldness, even 
from my Contemporaries of the Theatre, from having the super- 
fluous Capacity of writing myself the Characters I have acted. 

Here, perhaps, I may again seem to be vain; but if all these 
Facts are true (as true they are) how can I help it ? W^hy am I 



"TALKING OF HIMSELF'' 57 

oblig'd to conceal them ? The Merit of the best of them is not so 
extraordinary as to have warn'd me to be nice upon it ; and the Praise 
due to them is so small a Fish, it was scarce worth while to throw 
my Line into the Water for it. If I confess my Vanity while a 
Boy, can it be Vanity, when a Man, to remember it? And if I 
have a tolerable Feature, will not that as much belong to my Pic- 
ture as an Imperfection ? In a word, from what I have mentioned, 
I wou'd observe only this : That when we are conscious of the least 
comparative Merit in ourselves, we shou'd take as much care to 
conceal the value we set upon it, as if it were a real Defect : To 
be elated or vain upon it is shewing your Money before People 
in want ; ten to one but some who may think you to have too much 
may borrow, or pick your Pocket before you get home. He who 
assumes Praise to himself, the World will think overpays himself. 
Even the Suspicion of being vain ought as much to be dreaded as 
the Guilt itself. C(Esar was of the same Opinion in regard to his 
Wife's Chastity. Praise, tho' it may be our due, is not like a 
Bank-Bill, to be paid upon Demand; to be valuable it must be 
voluntary. When we are dun'd for it, we have a Right and Privi- 
lege to refuse it. If Compulsion insists upon it, it can only be paid 
as Persecution in Points of Faith is, in a counterfeit Coin: And 
whoever believ'd Occasional Conformity to be sincere? Nero, 
the most vain Coxcomb of a Tyrant that ever breath 'd, cou'd 
not raise an unfeigned Applause of his Harp by military Execution ; 
even where Praise is deserv'd. Ill-nature and Self-conceit (Pas- 
sions that poll a majority of Mankind) will with less reluctance 
part with their Mony than their Approbation. Men of the 
greatest Merit are forced to stay 'till they die before the World 
will fairly make up their Account : Then indeed you have a Chance 
for your full Due, because it is less grudg'd when you are incapable 
of enjoying it : Then perhaps even Malice shall heap Praises upon 
your Memory: tho' not for your sake, but that your surviving 
Competitors may suffer by a Comparison. 'Tis from the same 
Principle that Satyr shall have a thousand Readers where Panegyric 
has one. When I therefore find my Name at length in the Satyr- 
ical Works of our most celebrated living Author,^ I never look upon 
those Lines as Malice meant to me, (for he knows I never pro- 

* Pope satirized Cibber in the Dunciad. See post, pp. 240-242. 



58 COLLEY CIBBER 

vok'd it) but Profit to himself : One of his Points must be, to have 
many Readers: He considers that my Face and Name are more 
known than those of many thousands of more consequence in the 
Kingdom: That therefore, right or wrong, a Lick at the Laureat 
will always be a sure Bait, ad captandum vulgus, to catch him little 
Readers: And that to gratify the Unlearned, by now and then 
interspersing those merry Sacrifices of an old Acquaintance to their 
Taste, is a piece of quite right Poetical Craft. 

But as a little bad Poetry is the greatest Crime he lays to my 
charge, I am willing to subscribe to his opinion of it. That this 
sort of Wit is one of the easiest ways too of pleasing the generality 
of Readers, is evident from the comfortable subsistence which our 
weekly Retailers of Politicks have been known to pick up, merely 
by making bold with a Government that had unfortunately neg- 
lected to find their Genius a better Employment. 

Hence too arises all that flat Poverty of Censure and Invective 
that so often has a run in our Publick Papers upon the Success of 
a new Author; when, God knows, there is seldom above one 
Writer among hundreds in Being at the same time whose Satyr 
a man of common Sense ought to be mov'd at. When a Master 
in the Art is angry, then indeed we ought to be alarm'd! How 
terrible a Weapon is Satyr in the Hand of a great Genius ? Yet 
even there, how liable is Prejudice to misuse it? How far, when 
general, it may reform our Morals, or what Cruelties it may inflict 
by being angrily particular, is perhaps above my reach to determine. 
I shall therefore only beg leave to interpose what I feel for others 
whom it may personally have fallen upon. When I read those 
mortifying Lines of our most eminent Author, in his Character of 
Atticus^ {Atticus, whose Genius in Verse and whose Morality in 
Prose has been so justly admir'd) though I am charm'd with the 
Poetry, my Imagination is hurt at the Severity of it; and tho' 
I allow the Satyrist to have had personal Provocation, yet, me- 
thinks, for that very Reason, he ought not to have troubled the 
Publick with it: For, as it is observed in the 242nd Taller, "In 
all Terms of Reproof, when the Sentence appears to arise from 
Personal Hatred or Passion, it is not then made the Cause of 
Mankind, but a Misunderstanding between two Persons." But 

^ For an account of Pope's satire on Addison, see post, pp. 21 1-2 14, 237. 



''TALKING OF HIMSELF'' ^g 

if such kind of Satyr has its incontestable Greatness ; if its exem- 
plary Brightness may not mislead inferior Wits into a barbarous 
Imitation of its Severity, then I have only admir'd the Verses 
and expos'd myself by bringing them under so scrupulous a Re- 
flexion: But the Pain which the Acrimony of those Verses gave 
me is, in some measure, allay'd in finding that this inimitable 
Writer, as he advances in Years, has since had Candour enough 
to celebrate the same Person for his Visible Merit. Happy 
Genius ! whose Verse, like the Eye of Beauty, can heal the deepest 
Wounds with the least Glance of Favour. . . . 

This so singular Concern which I have shown for others may 
naturally lead you to ask me what I feel for myself when I am 
unfavourably treated by the elaborate Authors of our daily Papers. 
Shall I be sincere? and own my frailty? Its usual Effect is to 
make me vain ! For I consider if I were quite good for nothing 
these Pidlers in Wit would not be concerned to take me to pieces, 
or (not to be quite so vain) when they moderately charge me with 
only Ignorance or Dulness, I see nothing in That which an honest 
Man need be asham'd of: There is many a good Soul who from 
those sweet Slumbers of the Brain are never awaken'd by the least 
harmful Thought; and I am sometimes tempted to think those 
Retailers of Wit may be of the same Class; that what they write 
proceeds not from Malice, but Industry ; and that I ought no more 
to reproach them than I would a Lawyer that pleads against me 
for his Fee; that their Detraction, like Dung thrown upon a 
Meadow, tho' it may seem at first to deform the Prospect, in a 
little time it will disappear of itself and leave an involuntary Crop 
of Praise behind it. 

When they confine themselves to a sober Criticism upon what 
I write; if their Censure is just, what answer can I make to it? 
If it is unjust, why should I suppose that a sensible Reader will 
not see it, as well as myself ? Or, admit I were able to expose them 
by a laughing Reply, will not that Reply beget a Rejoinder? And 
though they may be Gainers by having the worst on't in a Paper 
War, that is no Temptation for me to come into it. Or (to make 
both sides less considerable) would not my bearing Ill-language 
from a Chimney-sweeper do me less harm than it would be to 
box with him, tho' I were sure to beat him ? Nor indeed is the 



6o COLLEY CIBBER 

little Reputation I have as an Author worth the trouble of a De- 
fence. Then, as no Criticism can possibly make me worse than 
I really am; so nothing I can say of myself can possibly make 
me better: When therefore a determin'd Critick comes arm'd 
with Wit and Outrage to take from me that small Pittance I have, 
I wou'd no more dispute with him than I wou'd resist a Gentle- 
man of the Road to save a Httle Pocket-Money. Men that are in 
want themselves seldom make a Conscience of taking it from others. 
Whoever thinks I have too much is welcome to what share of it he 
pleases: Nay, to make him more merciful (as I partly guess the 
worst he can say of what I now write) I will prevent even the 
Imputation of his doing me Injustice, and honestly say it myself, 
viz. That of all the Assurances I was ever guilty of, this of writing 
my own Life is the most hardy. I beg his Pardon ! — Impudent 
is what I should have said ! That through every Page there runs 
a Vein of Vanity and Impertinence which no French Ensigns 
memoires ever came up to; but, as this is a common Error, I pre- 
sume the Terms of Doating Trifler, Old Fool, or Conceited Cox- 
comb will carry Contempt enough for an Impartial Censor to be- 
stow on me; that my style is unequal, pert, and frothy, patch'd 
and party-colour' d like the Coat of an Harlequin; low and pom- 
pous, cramm'd with Epithets, strew'd with Scraps of second-hand 
Latin from common Quotations; frequently aiming at Wit, 
without ever hitting the Mark ; a mere Ragoust toss'd up from the 
offals of other authors : My Subject below all Pens but my own, 
which, whenever I keep to, is flatly daub'd by one eternal Ego- 
tism: That I want nothing but Wit to be as accompHsh'd a Cox- 
comb here as ever I attempted to expose on the Theatre: Nay, 
that this very Confession is no more a Sign of my Modesty than 
it is a Proof of my Judgment, that, in short, you may roundly 
tell me, that — Cinna (or Cibber) vult videri Pauper, et est Pauper. 

When humble Cinna cries, I'm poor and low, 
You may believe him — he is really so. 

Well, Sir Critick ! and what of all this ? Now I have laid myself 
at your feet, what will you do with me? Expose me? Why, 
dear Sir, does not every Man that writes expose himself ? Can you 
make me more ridiculous than Nature has made me ? You cou'd 



''TALKING OF HIMSELF" 6l 

not sure suppose that I would lose the Pleasure of Writing because 
you might possibly judge me a Blockhead, or perhaps might 
pleasantly tell other People they ought to think me so too. Will 
not they judge as well from what I say as what You say ? If then 
you attack me merely to divert yourself, your excuse for writing will 
be no better than mine. But perhaps you may want Bread : If that 
be the Case, even go to Dinner, i' God's name ! 

If our best Authors, when teiz'd by these Triflers, have not been 
Masters of this Indifference, I should not wonder if it were dis- 
believ'd in me ; but when it is consider'd that I have allow 'd my 
never having been disturb'd into a Reply has proceeded as much 
from Vanity as from Philosophy, the Matter then may not seem 
so incredible : And tho' I confess the complete Revenge of making 
them Immortal Dunces in Immortal Verse might be glorious ; yet, 
if you will call it insensibility in me never to have winc'd at them, 
even that Insensibility has its happiness, and what could Glory 
give me more ? For my part, I have always had the comfort to 
think, whenever they design 'd me a Disfavour, it generally flew 
back into their own Faces, as it happens to Children when they 
squirt at their Play-fellows against the Wind. If a Scribbler cannot 
be easy because he fancies I have too good an Opinion of my own 
Productions, let him write on and mortify; I owe him not the 
Charity to be out of temper myself merely to keep him quiet or 
give him Joy: Nor, in reality, can I see why anything misrepre- 
sented, tho' believ'd of me by Persons to whom I am unknown, 
ought to give me any more Concern than what may be thought of 
me in Lapland: 'Tis with those with whom I am to live only, where 
my character can affect me ; and I will venture to say, he must find 
out a new way of Writing that will make pass my Time there less 
agreeably. 

You see, Sir, how hard it is for a man that is talking of himself to 
know when to give over; but if you are tired, lay me aside till 
you have a fresh Appetite. 




62 EDWARD GIBBON 



EDWARD GIBBON 

[From The Memoirs of the Life of Edward Gibbon with Various Observa- 
tions and Excursions by Himself, 1795. Edited by G. B. Hill, Methuen & 
Co., London, 1900. 

Gibbon, Edward (i 737-1 794), historian; educated at Westminster; 
owed his taste for books to his aunt, Catherine Porten; spent fourteen 'un- 
profitable' months at Magdalen College, Oxford, 1752-3; became a 
Romanist after reading Middleton's 'Free Inquiry' and works by Bossuet 
and Parsons, 1753; at Lausanne (1753-8), where his tutor, Pavillard, 
drew him back to protestantism, and where he made friends with Deyver- 
dun and read widely; became attached to Susanne Curchod (afterwards 
Madame Necker), but in deference to his father broke off the engagement, 
1757; published 'Essai sur I'Etude de la Litterature,' 1761 (English version, 
1764); served in Hampshire militia, 1759-70, and studied military litera- 
ture; at Lausanne met Holroyd (afterwards Lord Shefi5eld); during a tour 
in Italy, 1764-5, formed plan of his 'History' amid the ruins of the Capi- 
tol; with Deyverdun published 'Memoires Litteraires de la Grande-Bre- 
tagne,' 1767-8, contributing a review of Lyttelton's 'Henry II': issued 
'Critical Observations on the Sixth Book of the JEneid,^ attacking Warbur- 
ton, 1770; settled in London, 1772; joined Dr. Johnson's Club, 1774; be- 
came professor in ancient history at the Royal Academy in succession to 
Goldsmith; M.P., Liskeard, 1774-80, Lymington, 1781-3; drew up 
a state paper against France, and was commissioner of trade and planta- 
tions, 1779-82; issued in 1776 the first volume of his 'Decline and Fall 
of the Roman Empire,' which passed into three editions, and obtained the 
favourable verdict of Hume, Robertson, Wart on, and Walpole; defended 
the chapters on growth of Christianity in his 'Vindication,' 1779; issued the 
second and third volumes, 1781, after a visit to Paris, where he met Buffon 
and disputed with De Mably; retired with Deyverdun to Lausanne, 1783, 
where he finished the work, 1787 (published, 1788); returned to England, 
1793; died suddenly in London; a Latin epitaph written for his monument 
at Fletching, Sussex, by Dr. Samuel Parr [q. v.]. His 'Miscellaneous Works' 
(edited by his friend Lord Sheffield, 1796) contained an autobiographical 
memoir, and 'Antiquities of the House of Brunswick' (1814). — Index and 
Epitome of D. N. B. 

"If, as Johnson said, there had been only three books 'written by man 
that were wished longer by their readers,' the eighteenth century was not to 
draw to its close without seeing a fourth added. With Don Quixote, The 
Pilgrim's Progress and Robinson Crusoe, the Autobiography of Edward 
Gibbon was henceforth to rank as ' a work whose conclusion is perceived with 
an eye of sorrow, such as the traveller casts upon departing day.' It is 
indeed so short that it can be read by the light of a single pair of candles ; it 
is so interesting in its subject, and so alluring in its turns of thought and its 
style, that in a second and third reading it gives scarcely less pleasure than 
in the first. Among the books in which men have told the story of their own 
lives it stands in the front rank. It is a striking fact that one of the first of 
autobiographies and the first of biographies were written in the same years. 




AT OXFORD 



63 



Boswell was still working at his Life of Johnson when Gibbon began those 
memoirs from which his autobiography, in the form in which it was given to the 
world, was so skilfully pieced together. But a short time had gone by since 
Johnson had said that 'he did not think that the life of any literary man in 
England had been well written.' That reproach against our writers he 
himself did much to lessen by his Lives of Cowley and of Milton, of Dryden 
and of Pope. It was finally removed by two members of that famous club 
which he had helped to found. However weak was the end of the eighteenth 
century in works of imagination, in one great branch of literature it faded 
nobly away. Both in the Life of Johnson and in the Aiitohiography of 
Edward Gibbon it * left something so written to after-times as they should not 
willingly let it die.' " — George Birkbeck Hill, The Memoirs of the Life 
of Edward Gibbon, Preface, p. v. 

AT OXFORD 

A traveller who visits Oxford or Cambridge is surprised and edi- 
fied by the apparent order and tranquillity that prevail in the 
seats of the English Muses. In the most celebrated universities 
of Holland, Germany, and Italy, the students, who swarm from 
different countries, are loosely dispersed in private lodgings at the 
houses of the burghers : they dress according to their fancy and 
fortune ; and in the intemperate quarrels of youth and wine, their 
swords, though less frequently than of old, are sometimes stained 
with each other's blood. The use of arms is banished from our 
English universities; the uniform habit of the academics, the 
square cap and black gown, is adapted to the civil and even 
clerical professions; and from the doctor in divinity to the under- 
graduate, the degrees of learning and age are externally distin- 
guished. Instead of being scattered in a town, the students of 
Oxford and Cambridge are united in colleges; their maintenance 
is provided at their own expense, or that of the founders; and 
the stated hours of the hall and chapel represent the disciphne of 
a regular and, as it were, a religious community. The eyes of 
the traveller are attracted by the size or beauty of the public 
edifices ; and the principal colleges appear to be so many palaces 
which a hberal nation has erected and endowed for the habitation 
of science. My own introduction to the University of Oxford 
forms a new era in my life, and at the distance of forty years I 
still remember my first emotions of surprise and satisfaction. In 
my fifteenth year I felt myself suddenly raised from a boy to a 
man : the persons whom I respected as my superiors in age and 



64 EDWARD GIBBON 

academical rank entertained me with every mark of attention and 
civility; and my vanity was flattered by the velvet cap and silk 
gown which distinguish a gentleman commoner from a plebeian 
student. A decent allowance, more money than a school-boy 
had ever seen, was at my own disposal; and I might command 
among the tradesmen of Oxford an indefinite and dangerous 
latitude of credit. A key was delivered into my hands which gave 
me the free use of a numerous and learned library, my apart- 
ment consisted of three elegant and well-furnished rooms in the 
new building, a stately pile, of Magdalen College, and the adja- 
cent walks, had they been frequented by Plato's disciples, might 
have been compared to the Attic shade on the banks of the Ilissus. 
Such was the fair prospect of my entrance (April 3, 1752) into the 
University of Oxford. 

A venerable prelate, whose taste and erudition must reflect 
honour on the society in which they were formed, has drawn a 
very interesting picture of his academical life. "I was educated," 
says Bishop Lowth, "in the University of Oxford. I enjoyed all 
the advantages, both public and private, which that famous seat 
of learning so largely affords. I spent many years in that illus- 
trious society, in a well-regulated course of useful discipHne and 
studies, and in the agreeable and improving commerce of gentle- 
men and of scholars ; in a society where emulation without envy, 
ambition without jealousy, contention without animosity, incited 
industry and awakened genius ; where a liberal pursuit of knowl- 
edge and a genuine freedom of thought was raised, encouraged, 
and pushed forward by example, by commendation, and by 
authority. I breathed the same atmosphere that the Hookers, 
the Chilhngworths, and the Lockes had breathed before; whose 
benevolence and humanity were as extensive as their vast genius 
and comprehensive knowledge; who always treated their adver- 
saries with civility and respect; who made candour, moderation, 
and liberal judgment as much the rule and law as the subject of 
their discourse. And do you reproach me with my education 
in this place, and with my relation to this most respectable body, 
which I shall always esteem my greatest advantage and my highest 
honour?" I transcribe with pleasure this eloquent passage, 
without examining what benefits or what rewards were derived by 



AT OXFORD 



65 



Hooker, or Chillingworth, or Locke, from their academical institu- 
tion ; without inquiring whether in this angry controversy the spirit 
of Lowth himself is purified from the intolerant zeal which War- 
burton had ascribed to the genius of the place. It may indeed be 
observed that the atmosphere of Oxford did not agree with Mr. 
Locke's constitution; and that the philosopher justly despised the 
academical bigots who expelled his person and condemned his 
principles. The expression of gratitude is a virtue and a pleasure : 
a liberal mind will delight to cherish and celebrate the memory of its 
parents; and the teachers of science are the parents of the mind. 
I applaud the filial piety, which it is impossible for me to imitate ; 
since I must not confess an imaginary debt to assume the merit of a 
just or generous retribution. To the University of Oxford / ac- 
knowledge no obligation ; and she will as cheerfully renounce me 
for a son as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother. I spent four- 
teen months at Magdalen College ; they proved the fourteen months 
the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life ; the reader will pro- 
nounce between the school and the scholar; but I cannot affect to 
believe that Nature had disqualified me for all literary pursuits. 
The specious and ready excuse of my tender age, imperfect prepara- 
tion, and hasty departure may doubtless be alleged ; nor do I wish 
to defraud such excuses of their proper weight. Yet in my sixteenth 
year I was not devoid of capacity or application ; even my childish 
reading had displayed an early though blind propensity for books; 
and the shallow flood might have been taught to flow in a deep 
channel and a clear stream. In the discipline of a well-constituted 
academy, under the guidance of skilful and vigilant professors, I 
should gradually have risen from translations to originals, from the 
Latin to the Greek classics, from dead languages to living science : 
my hours would have been occupied by useful and agreeable 
studies, the wanderings of fancy would have been restrained, and 
I should have escaped the temptations of idleness which finally 
precipitated my departure from Oxford. 

Perhaps in a separate annotation I may coolly examine the 
fabulous and real antiquities of our sister universities, a question 
which has kindled such fierce and foolish disputes among their 
fanatic sons. In the meanwhile it will be acknowledged that 
these venerable bodies are sufficiently old to partake of all the 



66 EDWARD GIBBON 

prejudices and infirmities of age. The schools of Oxford and 
Cambridge were founded in a dark age of false and barbarous 
science; and they are still tainted with the vices of their origin. 
Their primitive discipline was adapted to the education of priests 
and monks; and the government still remains in the hands of 
the clergy, an order of men whose manners are remote from the 
present world, and whose eyes are dazzled by the light of phi- 
losophy. The legal incorporation of these societies by the charters 
of popes and kings had given them a monopoly of the public 
instruction; and the spirit of monopolists is narrow, lazy, and 
oppressive ; their work is more costly and less productive than 
that of independent artists ; and the new improvements so eagerly 
grasped by the competition of freedom are admitted with slow 
and sullen reluctance in those proud corporations, above the fear 
of a rival, and below the confession of an error. We may scarcely 
hope that any formation will be a voluntary act; and so deeply 
are they rooted in law and prejudice, that even the omnipotence 
of parliament would shrink from an inquiry into the state and 
abuses of the two universities. 

The use of academical degrees, as old as the thirteenth century, 
is visibly borrowed from the mechanic corporations; in which an 
apprentice, after serving his time, obtains a testimonial of his 
skill, and a licence to practise his trade and mystery. It is not 
my design to depreciate those honours, which could never gratify 
or disappoint my ambition ; and I should applaud the institution, 
if the decrees of bachelor or licentiate were bestowed as the 
reward of manly and successful study: if the name and rank of 
doctor or master were strictly reserved for the professors of science, 
who have approved their title to the pubUc esteem. 

In all the universities of Europe, excepting our own, the lan- 
guages and sciences are distributed among a numerous list of 
effective professors: the students, according to their taste, their 
calHng, and their diligence, apply themselves to the proper masters ; 
and in the annual repetition of public and private lectures these 
masters are assiduously employed. Our curiosity may inquire 
what number of professors has been instituted at Oxford? (for 
I shall now confine myself to my own university). By whom are 
they appointed, and what may be the probable chances of merit or 



AT OXFORD 67 

incapacity? How many are stationed to the three faculties, and 
how many are left for the liberal arts ? What is the form, and what 
the substance, of their lessons? But all these questions are 
silenced by one short and singular answer, " That in the University 
of Oxford, the greater part of the public professors have for these 
many years given up altogether even the pretence of teaching." 
Incredible as the fact may appear, I must rest my belief on the posi- 
tive and impartial evidence of a master of moral and political wis- 
dom, who had himself resided at Oxford. Dr. Adam Smith 
assigns as the cause of their indolence, that, instead of being paid 
by voluntary contributions, which would urge them to increase the 
number, and to deserve the gratitude of their pupils, the Oxford 
professors are secure in the enjoyment of a fixed stipend, without 
the necessity of labour or the apprehension of control. It has in- 
deed been observed, nor is the observation absurd, that excepting 
in experimental sciences, which demand a costly apparatus and a 
dexterous hand, the many valuable treatises that have been pub- 
lished on every subject of learning may now supersede the ancient 
mode of oral instruction. Were this principle true in its utmost 
latitude, I should only infer that the offices and salaries which are 
become useless ought without delay to be abolished. But there 
still remains a material difference between a book and a professor ; 
the hour of the lecture enforces attendance; attention is fixed by 
the presence, the voice, and the occasional questions of the teacher ; 
the most idle will carry something away; and the more diligent 
will compare the instructions which they have heard in the school 
with the volumes which they peruse in their chamber. The ad- 
vice of a skilful professor will adapt a course of reading to every 
mind and every situation; his authority will discover, admonish, 
and at last chastise the negligence of his disciples ; and his vigilant 
inquiries will ascertain the steps of their literary progress. What- 
ever science he professes he may illustrate in a series of discourses, 
composed in the leisure of his closet, pronounced on public 
occasions, and finally delivered to the press. I observe with 
pleasure that in the University of Oxford Dr. Lowth, with equal 
eloquence and erudition, has executed this task in his incom- 
parable Preelections on the Poetry of the Hebrews. 

The College of St. Mary Magdalen was founded in the fifteenth 



68 EDWARD GIBBON 

century by Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester; and now consists of 
a president, forty fellows, and a number of inferior students. It is 
esteemed one of the largest and most wealthy of our academical 
corporations, which may be compared to the Benedictine abbeys 
of Catholic countries; and I have loosely heard that the estates 
belonging to Magdalen College, which are leased by those in- 
dulgent landlords at small quit-rents and occasional fines, might 
be raised, in the hands of private avarice, to an annual revenue 
of nearly ;^3 0,000. Our colleges are supposed to be schools of 
science as well as of education; nor is it unreasonable to expect 
that a body of literary men, devoted to a life of ceHbacy, exempt 
from the care of their own subsistence, and amply provided with 
books, should devote their leisure to the prosecution of study, 
and that some effects of their studies should be manifested to the 
world. The shelves of their library groan under the weight of the 
Benedictine folios, of the editions of the fathers, and the collec- 
tions of the Middle Ages, which have issued from the single abbey 
of St. Germain de Prez at Paris. A composition of genius must 
be the offspring of one mind; but such works of industry as may 
be divided among many hands, and must be continued during 
many years, are the peculiar province of a laborious community. 
If I inquire into the manufactures of the monks of Magdalen, if I 
extend the inquiry to the other colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, 
a silent blush, or a scornful frown, will be the only reply. The 
fellows or monks of my time were decent easy men, who supinely 
enjoyed the gifts of the founder : their days were filled by a series 
of uniform employments; the chapel and the hall, the coffee- 
house and the common room, till they retired, weary and well 
satisfied, to a long slumber. From the toil of reading, or think- 
ing, or writing, they had absolved their conscience; and the first 
shoots of learning and ingenuity withered on the ground, without 
yielding any fruits to the owners or the public. As a gentleman 
commoner, I was admitted to the society of the fellows, and fondly 
expected that some questions of literature would be the amusing 
and instructive topics of their discourse. Their conversation 
stagnated in a round of college business, Tory politics, personal 
anecdotes, and private scandal: their dull and deep potations 
excused the brisk intemperance of youth ; and their constitutional 



AT OXFORD 



69 



toasts were not expressive of the most lively loyalty for the house 
of Hanover. A general election was now approaching : the great 
Oxfordshire contest already blazed with all the malevolence of 
party zeal. Magdalen College was devoutly attached to the old 
interest; and the names of Wenman and Dashwood were more 
frequently pronounced than those of Cicero and Chrysostom. 
The example of the senior fellows could not inspire the under- 
graduates with a Hberal spirit or studious emulation ; and I cannot 
describe, as I never knew, the discipline of college. Some duties 
may possibly have been imposed on the poor scholars whose 
ambition aspired to the peaceful honours of a fellowship (ascribi 
qiiietis ordinihus . . . Deoruni) ; but no independent members 
were admitted below the rank of a gentleman commoner, and our 
velvet cap was the cap of liberty. A tradition prevailed that some 
of our predecessors had spoken Latin declamations in the hall, 
but of this ancient custom no vestige remained: the obvious 
methods of public exercises and examinations were totally un- 
known; and I have never heard that either the president or 
the society interfered in the private economy of the tutors and 
their pupils. 

The silence of the Oxford professors, which deprives the youth 
of public instruction, is imperfectly suppHed by the tutors, as they 
are styled, of the several colleges. Instead of confining them- 
selves to a single science, which had satisfied the ambition of 
Burman or Bernouilli, they teach, or promise to teach, either his- 
tory or mathematics, or ancient literature, or moral philosophy; 
and as it is possible that they may be defective in all, it is highly 
probable that of some they will be ignorant. They are paid, 
indeed, by private contributions; but their appointment depends 
on the head of the house: their diligence is voluntary, and will 
consequently be languid, while the pupils themselves, or their 
parents, are not indulged in the liberty of choice or change. The 
first tutor into whose hands I was resigned appears to have been 
one of the best of the tribe: Dr. Waldegrave was a learned and 
pious man, of a mild disposition, strict morals, and abstemious 
life, who seldom mingled in the politics or the joUity of the college. 
But his knowledge of the world was confined to the university; 
his learning was of the last, rather than of the present age; his 



yo EDWARD GIBBON 

temper was indolent; his faculties, which were not of the first 
rate, had been relaxed by the climate, and he was satisfied, like his 
fellows, with the slight and superficial discharge of an important 
trust. As soon as my tutor had sounded the insufficiency of his 
pupil in school-learning, he proposed that we should read every 
morning from ten to eleven the comedies of Terence. The sum 
of my improvement in the University of Oxford is confined to three 
or four Latin plays; and even the study of an elegant classic, 
which might have been illustrated by a comparison of ancient 
and modern theatres, was reduced to a dry and literal interpretation 
of the author's text. During the first weeks I constantly attended 
these lessons in my tutor's room; but as they appeared equally 
devoid of profit and pleasure, I was once tempted to try the experi- 
ment of a formal apology. The apology was accepted with a smile. 
I repeated the offence with less ceremony; the excuse was ad- 
mitted with the same indulgence: the slightest motive of laziness 
or indisposition, the most trifling avocation at home or abroad, was 
allowed as a worthy impediment; nor did my tutor appear con- 
scious of my absence or neglect. Had the hour of lecture been 
constantly filled, a single hour was a small portion of my academic 
leisure. No plan of study was recommended for my use; no 
exercises were prescribed for his inspection; and, at the most 
precious season of youth, whole days and weeks were suffered to 
elapse without labour or amusement, without advice or account. I 
should have listened to the voice of reason and of my tutor; his 
mild behaviour had gained my confidence. I preferred his society 
to that of the younger students; and in our evening walks to the 
top of Heddington Hill we freely conversed on a variety of subjects. 
Since the days of Pocock and Hyde, Oriental learning has always 
been the pride of Oxford, and I once expressed an inclination to 
study Arabic. His prudence discouraged this childish fancy; 
but he neglected the fair occasion of directing the ardour of a 
curious mind. During my absence in the summer vacation. Dr. 
Waldegrave accepted a college living at Washington in Sussex, 
and on my return I no longer found him at Oxford. From that 
time I have lost sight of my first tutor; but at the end of thirty 
years (1781) he was still alive; and the practice of exercise and 
temperance had entitled him to a healthy old age. 



AT OXFORD ^j 

The long recess between the Trinity and Michaelmas terms 
empties the colleges of Oxford as well as the courts of West- 
minster. I spent, at my father's house at Buriton in Hampshire, 
the two months of August and September. It is whimsical 
enough that as soon as I left Magdalen College my taste for books 
began to revive, but it was the same blind and boyish taste for the 
pursuit of exotic history. 

MY EARLY LOVE 

I hesitate, from the apprehension of ridicule, when I approach 
the delicate subject of my early love. By this word I do not mean 
the polite attention, the gallantry, without hope or design, which 
has originated in the spirit of chivalry, and is interwoven with 
the texture of French manners. I understand by this passion the 
union of desire, friendship, and tenderness, which is inflamed by 
a single female, which prefers her to the rest of her sex, and which 
seeks her possession as the supreme or the sole happiness of our 
being. I need not blush at recollecting the object of my choice; 
and though my love was disappointed of success, I am rather proud 
that I was once capable of feeling such a pure and exalted senti- 
ment. The personal attractions of Mademoiselle Susan Curchod 
were embelUshed by the virtues and talents of the mind. Her 
fortune was humble, but her family was respectable. Her mother, 
a native of France, had preferred her religion to her country. 
The profession of her father did not extinguish the moderation and 
philosophy of his temper, and he lived content with a small salary 
and laborious duty in the obscure lot of minister of Crassy, in the 
mountains that separate the Pays de Vaud from the county of 
Burgundy.^ In the soHtude of a sequestered village he bestowed 

^ Extracts from the Journal. 

March 1757. — I wrote some critical observations upon Plautus. 

March 8th. — I wrote a long dissertation on some lines of Virgil. 

June. — I saw Mademoiselle Curchod — Omnia vincit amor, et nos cedamtts 
amori. 

August. — I went to Crassy, and stayed two days. 

Sept. isth. — I went to Geneva. 

Oct. isth. — I came back to Lausanne, having passed through Crassy. 

Nov. 1st. — I went to visit M. de Watteville at Loin, and saw Mademoiselle 
Curchod in my way through Rolle. 

Nov. 17th. — I went to Crassy and stayed there six days. 

Jan 1758. — In the three first months of this year I read Ovid's Metamor- 



72 EDWARD GIBBON 

a liberal, and even learned, education on his only daughter. She 
surpassed his hopes of her proficiency in the sciences and languages ; 
and in her short visits to some relations at Lausanne, the wit, 
the beauty, and erudition of Mademoiselle Curchod were the theme 
of universal applause. The report of such a prodigy awakened 
my curiosity; I saw and loved. I found her learned without 
pedantry, lively in conversation, pure in sentiment, and elegant 
in manners ; and the first sudden emotion was fortified by the 
habits and knowledge of a more familiar acquaintance. She per- 
mitted me to make her two or three visits at her father's house. 
I passed some happy days there, in the mountains of Burgundy, 
and her parents honourably encouraged the connection. In a calm 
retirement the gay vanity of youth no longer fluttered in her bosom ; 
she listened to the voice of truth and passion, and I might presume 
to hope that I had made some impression on a virtuous heart. 
At Crassy and Lausanne I indulged my dream of felicity : but on my 
return to England I soon discovered that my father would not hear 
of this strange alliance, and that without his consent I was myself 
destitute and helpless. After a painful struggle I yielded to my 
fate : I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son ; my wound was in- 
sensibly healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new life. My 
cure was accelerated by a faithful report of the tranquillity and 
cheerfulness of the lady herself, and my love subsided in friendship 
and esteem. The minister of Crassy soon afterwards died; 
his stipend died with him : his daughter retired to Geneva, where, 
by teaching young ladies, she earned a hard subsistence for herself 
and her mother ; but in her lowest distress she maintained a spot- 
less reputation and a dignified behaviour. A rich banker of Paris, a 
citizen of Geneva, had the good fortune and good sense to discover 
and possess this inestimable treasure; and in the capital of taste 
and luxury she resisted the temptations of wealth as she had sus- 
tained the hardships of indigence. The genius of her husband has 
exalted him to the most conspicuous station in Europe. In every 

phoses, finished the Conic Sections with M. de Traytorrens, and went as far as 
the infinite series; I Hkewise read Sir Isaac Newton's Chronology, and wrote my 
critical observations upon it. 

Jan. 2^rd. — I saw Alzire acted by the society at Monrepos. Voltaire acted 
Alvares; D'Hermanches, Zamore; De St. Cierge, Gusman; M. de Gentil, 
Monteze; and Madame Denys, Alzire. 



MY EARLY LOVE 



73 



change of prosperity and disgrace he has reclined on the bosom 
of a faithful friend ; and Mademoiselle Curchod is now the wife of 
M. Necker, the Minister, and perhaps the legislator, of the French 
monarchy. 

"THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE" 

It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing 
amidst the ruins of the Capitol, w^hile the barefooted friars were 
singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter,^ that the idea of writing 
the Decline and Fall of the city first started to my mind. But my 
original plan was circumscribed to the decay of the city rather 
than of the empire ; and though my reading and reflections began 
to point towards that object, some years elapsed, and several 
avocations intervened, before I was seriously engaged in the execu- 
tion of that laborious work. . . . 

In the fifteen years between my "Essay on the Study of Litera- 
ture " and the first volume of the "DecHne and Fall " (1761-76), 
this criticism on Warburton, and some articles in the Journal, 
were my sole publications. It is more especially incumbent on me 
to mark the employment, or to confess the waste of time, from 
my travels to my father's death, an interval in which I was not 
diverted by any professional duties from the labours and pleasures 
of a studious life. i. As soon as I was released from the fruit- 
less task of the Swiss Revolutions (1768), I began gradually to 
advance from the wish to the hope, from the hope to the design, 
from the design to the execution, of my historical work of whose 
limits and extent I had yet a very inadequate notion. The classics, 
as low as Tacitus, the younger Pliny, and Juvenal, were my old 
and familiar companions. I insensibly plunged into the ocean of 
the Augustan history; and in the descending series I investigated, 
with my pen almost always in my hand, the original records, both 
Greek and Latin, from Dion Cassius to Ammianus Marcellinus, 
from the reign of Trajan to the last age of the Western Caesars. 
The subsidiary rays of medals and inscriptions, of geography and 
chronology, were thrown on their proper objects ; and I applied the 
collections of Tillemont, whose inimitable accuracy almost assumes 

' Now the church of Santa Maria in Aracceli. 



74 EDWARD GIBBON 

the character of genius, to fix and arrange within my reach the 
loose and scattered atoms of historical information. Through the 
darkness of the Middle Ages I explored my way in the Annals and 
Antiquities of Italy of the learned Muratori ; and diligently com- 
pared them with the parallel or transverse lines of Sigonius and 
Maffei, Baronius and Pagi, till I almost grasped the ruins of 
Rome in the fourteenth century, without suspecting that this 
final chapter must be attained by the labour of six quartos and 
twenty years. Among the books which I purchased, the Theo- 
dosian Code, with the commentary of James Godefroy, must be 
gratefully remembered. I used it (and much I used it) as a work 
of history rather than of jurisprudence ; but in every light it may 
be considered as a full and capacious repository of the political 
state of the Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries. As I be- 
lieved, and as I still beheve, that the propagation of the Gospel 
and the triumph of the Church are inseparably connected with 
the decline of the Roman monarchy, I weighed the causes and 
effects of the revolution, and contrasted the narratives and apolo- 
gies of the Christians themselves with the glances of candour 
or enmity which the Pagans have cast on the rising sects. The 
Jewish and Heathen testimonies, as they are collected and illus- 
trated by Dr. Lardner, directed, without superseding, my search 
of the originals; and in an ample dissertation on the miraculous 
darkness of the Passion, I privately drew my conclusions from 
the silence of an unbelieving age. I have assembled the prepara- 
tory studies directly or indirectly relative to my History; but in 
strict equity they must be spread beyond this period of my life, 
over the two summers (1771 and 1772) that elapsed between my 
father's death and my settlement in London. 2. In a free 
conversation with books and men, it would be endless to enumerate 
the names and characters of all who are introduced to our ac- 
quaintance; but in this general acquaintance we may select the 
degrees of friendship and esteem. According to the wise maxim, 
Multum legere potius quam multa, 1 reviewed again and again 
the immortal works of the French and English, the Latin and 
ItaHan classics. My Greek studies (though less assiduous than 
I designed) maintained and extended my knowledge of that in- 
comparable idiom. Homer and Xenophon were still my favourite 



"THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE'' 75 

authors, and I had almost prepared for the press an essay on the 
Cyropoedia, which in my own judgment is not unhappily laboured. 
After a certain age, the new publications of merit are the sole 
food of the many; and the most austere student will be often 
tempted to break the line for the sake of indulging his own curiosity 
and of providing the topics of fashionable currency. A more 
respectable motive may be assigned for the third perusal of Black- 
stone's Commentaries, and a copious and critical abstract of that 
English work was my first serious production in my native language. 
3. My literary leisure was much less complete and independent 
than it might appear to the eye of a stranger. In the hurry of 
London I was destitute of books ; in the solitude of Hampshire I 
was not master of my time. My quiet was gradually disturbed by 
our domestic anxiety, and I should be ashamed of my unfeeling 
philosophy had I found much time or taste for study in the last 
fatal summer (1770) of my father's decay and dissolution. . . . 

No sooner was I settled in my house and library, than I under- 
took the composition of the first volume of my History. At the 
outset all was dark and doubtful; even the title of the work, the 
true era of the Decline and Fall of the Empire, the limits of 
the introduction, the division of the chapters, and the order of 
the narrative; and I was often tempted to cast away the labour 
of seven years. The style of an author should be the image of 
his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of 
exercise. Many experiments were made before I could hit the 
middle tone between a dull chronicle and a rhetorical declama- 
tion: three times did I compose the first chapter, and twice the 
second and third, before I was tolerably satisfied with their effect. 
In the remainder of the way I advanced with a more equal and 
easy pace; but the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters have been 
reduced, by three successive revisals, from a large volume to their 
present size ; and they might still be compressed without any loss 
of facts or sentiments. An opposite fault may be imputed to the 
concise and superficial narrative of the first reigns from Corn- 
modus to Alexander ; a fault of which I have never heard, except 
from Mr. Hume in his last journey to London. Such an oracle 
might have been consulted and obeyed with rational devotion; 
but I was soon disgusted with the modest practice of reading the 



76 EDWARD GIBBON 

manuscript to my friends. Of such friends some will praise from 
politeness, and some will criticise from vanity. The author him- 
self is the best judge of his own performance ; no one has so deeply 
meditated on the subject; no one is so sincerely interested in the 
event. . . . 

The volume of my History, which had been somewhat delayed 
by the novelty and tumult of a first session,^ was now ready for 
the press. After the perilous adventure had been declined by 
my friend Mr. Elmsley, I agreed, upon easy terms, with Mr. 
Thomas Cadell, a respectable bookseller, and Mr. William 
Strahan, an eminent printer; and they undertook the care and 
risk of the publication, which derived more credit from the name 
of the shop than from that of the author. The last revisal of 
the proofs was submitted to my vigilance; and many blemishes 
of style, which had been invisible in the manuscript, were dis- 
covered and corrected in the printed sheet. So moderate were 
our hopes, that the original impression had been stinted to five 
hundred, till the number was doubled by the prophetic taste 
of Mr. Strahan. During this awful interval I was neither elated 
by the ambition of fame nor depressed by the apprehension of 
contempt. My diligence and accuracy were attested by my own 
conscience. History is the most popular species of writing, since 
it can adapt itself to the highest or the lowest capacity. I had 
chosen an illustrious subject. Rome is familiar to the school-boy 
and the statesman; and my narrative was deduced from the last 
period of classical reading. I had likewise flattered myself that 
an age of light and liberty would receive without scandal an 
inquiry into the human causes of the progress and establishment 
of Christianity. 

I am at a loss how to describe the success of the work without 
betraying the vanity of the writer. The first impression was 
exhausted in a few days ; a second and third edition were scarcely 
adequate to the demand ; and the bookseller's property was twice 
invaded by the pirates of Dublin. My book was on every table, 
and almost on every toilette; the historian was crowned by the 

^ " The eight sessions that I sat in parliament were a school of civil prudence, 
the first and most essential virtue of an historian." — Gibbon, Memoirs, ed. G. B. 
Hill, p. 193. 



''THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE'' 77 

taste or fashion of the day; nor was the general voice disturbed 
by the barking of any profane critic. The favour of mankind 
is most freely bestowed on a new acquaintance of any original 
merit; and the mutual surprise of the public and their favourite 
is productive of those warm sensibihties which at a second meeting, 
can no longer be rekindled. If I listened to the music of praise, 
I was more seriously satisfied with the approbation of my judges. 
The candour of Dr. Robertson embraced his disciple. A letter 
from Mr. Hume overpaid the labour of ten years; but I have 
never presumed to accept a place in the triumvirate of British 
Historians. . . . 

Nearly two years had elapsed between the publication of my 
first and the commencement of my second volume, and the causes 
must be assigned to this long delay, i. After a short holiday, I 
indulged my curiosity in some studies of a very different nature, 
a course of anatomy, which was demonstrated by Dr. Hunter; 
and some lessons of chemistry, which were delivered by Mr. 
Higgins. The principles of these sciences, and a taste for books 
of natural history, contributed to multiply my ideas and images ; 
and the anatomist and chemist may sometimes track me in their 
own snow. 2. I dived, perhaps too deeply, into the mud of 
the Arian controversy, and many days of reading, thinking, and 
writing were consumed in the pursuit of a phantom. 3. It is diffi- 
cult to arrange, with order and perspicuity, the various trans- 
actions of the age of Constantine ; and so much was I displeased 
with the first essay, that I committed to the flames above fifty 
sheets. 4. The six months of Paris and pleasure must be de- 
ducted from the account. But when I resumed my task, I felt 
my improvement ; I was now master of my style and subject, and 
while the measure of my daily performance was enlarged, I dis- 
covered less reason to cancel or correct. It has always been my 
practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by 
my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action 
of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work. Shall 
I add, that I never found my mind more vigorous nor my com- 
position more happy than in the winter hurry of society and 
parliament? . . . 

So flexible is the title of my History, that the final era might 



yS EDWARD GIBBON 

be fixed at my own choice ; and I long hesitated whether I should 
be content with the three volumes, the Fall of the Western Empire, 
which fulfilled my first engagement with the public. In this 
interval of suspense, nearly a twelvemonth, I returned by a 
natural impulse to the Greek authors of antiquity; I read with 
new pleasure the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Histories of He- 
rodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, a large portion of the tragic 
and comic theatre of Athens, and many interesting dialogues of 
the Socratic school. Yet in the luxury of freedom I began to 
wish for the daily task, the active pursuit, which gave a value to 
every book and an object to every inquiry ; the preface of a new 
edition announced my design, and I dropped without reluctance 
from the age of Plato to that of Justinian. The original texts of 
ProcopiusandAgathias supplied the events and even the characters 
of his reign; but a laborious winter was devoted to the Codes, 
the Pandects, and the modern interpreters, before I presumed 
to form an abstract of the civil law. My skill was improved by 
practice, my diligence perhaps was quickened by the loss of office ; 
and excepting the last chapter, I had finished the fourth volume 
before I sought a retreat on the banks of the Leman Lake. . . . 

My transmigration from London to Lausanne could not be 
effected without interrupting the course of my historical labours. 
The hurry of my departure, the joy of my arrival, the delay of 
my tools, suspended their progress; and a full twelvemonth was 
lost before I could resume the thread of regular and daily in- 
dustry. A number of books most requisite and least common 
had been previously selected ; the academical library of Lausanne, 
which I could use as my own, contained at least the Fathers and 
Councils; and I have derived some occasional succour from the 
public collections of Berne and Geneva. The fourth volume 
was soon terminated by an abstract of the controversies of the In- 
carnation, which the learned Dr. Prideaux was apprehensive of 
exposing to profane eyes. It had been the original design of the 
learned Dean Prideaux to write the history of the ruin of the 
Eastern Church. In this work it would have been necessary, not 
only to unravel all those controversies which the Christians made 
about the hypostatical union, but also to unfold all the niceties 
and subtle notions which each sect entertained concerning it. The 



''THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 



79 



pious historian was apprehensive of exposing that incomprehensible 
mystery to the cavils and objections of unbelievers; and he durst 
not, "seeing the nature of this book, venture it abroad in so wanton 
and lewd an age. " ^ 

In the fifth and sixth volumes the revolutions of the empire 
and the world are most rapid, various, and instructive; and the 
Greek or Roman historians are checked by the hostile narratives 
of the barbarians of the East and the West.^ 

It was not till after many designs and many trials that I pre- 
ferred, as I still prefer, the method of grouping my picture by 
nations ; and the seeming neglect of chronological order is surely 
compensated by the superior merits of interest and perspicuity. 
The style of the first volume is, in my opinion, somewhat crude 
and elaborate; in the second and third it is ripened into ease, 
correctness, and numbers; but in the three last I may have been 
seduced by the facility of my pen, and the constant habit of speak- 
ing one language and writing another may have infused some 
mixture of Galhc idioms. Happily for my eyes, I have always 
closed my studies with the day, and commonly with the morning ; 
and a long but temperate labour has been accomplished without 
fatiguing either the mind or body; but when I computed the 
remainder of my time and my task, it was apparent that, 
according to the season of publication, the delay of a month would 
be productive of that of a year. I was now straining for the goal, 
and in the last winter many evenings were borrowed from the 
social pleasures of Lausanne. I could now wish that a pause, an 
interval, had been allowed for a serious revisal. 

1 have presumed to mark the moment of conception: I shall 
now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on 
the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June 1787, between the 
hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last 
page in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my 
pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, 
which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the 

^ See preface to the Life of Mahomet, p. xxi. — Gibbon. 

2 I have followed the judicious precept of the Abbe de Mably (Manibre d'dcrire 
I'Histoire, p. no), who advises the historian not to dwell too minutely on the decay 
of the eastern empire; but to consider the barbarian conquerors as a more worthy 
subject of his narrative. "Fas est et ab hoste doceri." 



8o THOMAS CARLYLE 

mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the 
silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all 
nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy 
on the recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the establishment 
of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melan- 
choly was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an 
everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that 
whatsoever might be the future date of my History, the life of the 
historian must be short and precarious. 



THOMAS CARLYLE 

LIFE IN LONDON 

[From "Jane Welsh Carlyle," written in 1866, Reminiscences , Vol. I, 
pp. 1 71-175, 185-203. Edited by C. E. Norton, Macmillan & Co., London, 

1887. 

Carlyle, Thomas (i 795-1881), essayist and historian; son of a mason 
at Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire; educated at the parish school, and (1805) 
at Annan academy; entered Edinburgh University, 1809; studied mathe- 
matics; intended for the church; mathematical teacher at Annan, 1814; 
schoolmaster at Kirkcaldy, 1816, where he became intimate with Edward 
Irving; read law in Edinburgh, 1819, where he developed extreme 
sensitiveness to physical discomforts; took pupils; read German; met his 
future wife [see Jane Baillie Welsh Carlyle], 1821; tutor to Charles 
Buller at Edinburgh and Dunkeld, 1822-4; contributed a 'Life of 
Schiller' to the 'London Magazine,' 1824; translated Legendre's 'Geome- 
try' and Goethe's 'Wilhelm Meister,' 1824; visited Paris, 1824; lodged in 
Islington, 1825; retired to Dumfriesshire, 1825; married and settled in 
Edinburgh, 1826; contributed to the 'Edinburgh Review,' 1827-9; ^^- 
successful candidate for the moral philosophy chair at St. Andrews; re- 
moved to Craigenputtock, Dumfriesshire, 1828, where he wrote on German 
literature for the magazines; in great monetary difiQculties, 1831; in Lon- 
don, 1831, where he failed to get 'Sartor Resartus' pubhshed; returned to 
Craigenputtock, 1832; removed to Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 1834; the manu- 
script of the first volume of his 'French Revolution' accidentally burnt by 
John Stuart Mill, March 1835; met John Sterling, 1835; pubhshed 
his 'French Revolution,' 1837, and made his reputation; gave four lecture- 
courses in London, 1837-40, the last on 'Hero-worship' (published 1841); 
urged formation of London Library, 1839; published 'Chartism,' 1839, 
'Past and Present,' 1843, a^^id 'OHver Cromwell,' 1845; visited Ireland, 
1846 and 1849; pubhshed 'Life of Steriing,' 1851; wrote 'Frederick the 
Great,' 1851-1865 (published 1858-65); travelled in Germany, 1852 and 
1858; lord rector of Edinburgh University, 1865-6; lost his wife, 1866; 
wrote his 'Reminiscences' (pubhshed 1881); published pamphlet in favour 



LIFE IN LONDON 8 1 

of Germany in regard to Franco-German war, 1870; his right hand para- 
lysed, 1872; received the Prussian order of merit, 1874; buried at Eccle- 
fechan; benefactor of Edinburgh University. His 'Collected Works' first 
appeared 1857-8. His 'life' was written with great frankness by his friend 
and disciple, James Anthony Froude. — Index and Epitome of D. N. B. 

"The paper of this poor Notebook of hers is done; all I have to say, too 
(though there lie such volumes yet unsaid), seems to be almost done: and 
I must sorrowfully end it, and seek for something else. Very sorrowfully 
still ; for it has been my sacred shrine, and religious city of refuge from the 
bitterness of these sorrows, during all the doleful weeks that are past since I 
took it up: a kind of devotional thing (as I once already said), which softens 
all grief into tenderness and infinite pity and repentant love; one's whole sad 
life drowned as if in tears for one, and all the wrath and scorn and other grim 
elements silently melted away. And now, am I to leave it ; to take farewell 
of Her a second time? Right silent and serene is She^ my lost Darling 
yonder, as I often think in my gloom ; no sorrow more for Her, — nor will 
there long be for me." — Carlyle, Note at end of Reminiscences of Jane 
Welsh Carlyle. 

"Two hours of hysterics can be no good matter for a sick nurse, and the 
strange, hard old being, in so lamentable and yet human a desolation — 
crying out like a burnt child, and yet always wisely and beautifully — how 
can that end, as a piece of reading, even to the strong — but on the brink of 
the most cruel kind of weeping? I observe the old man's style is stronger 
on me than ever it was, and by rights, too, since I have just laid down his 
most attaching book. God rest the baith o' them ! But even if they do not 
meet again, how we should all be strengthened to be kind, and not only in 
act, in speech also, that so much more important part. See what this apostle 
of silence most regrets, not speaking out his heart." — Robert Louis 
Stevenson, Letter to Colvin, "Spring, 1881," Letters^ Vol. I, p. 231. 
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1899.] 



She^ liked London constantly; and stood in defence of it against 
me and my atrabilious censures of it; never had for herself the 
least wish to quit it again, though I was often talking of that, and 
her practice would have been loyal compliance for my behoof. I 
well remember my first walking her up to Hyde Park Corner in the 
summer evening, and her fine interest in everything. At the corner 
of the Green Park, I found something for her to sit on; ''Hah, 
there is John Mill coming!" I said; and her joyful ingenuous 
blush is still very beautiful to me. The good Child ! It did not 
prove to be John Mill (whom she knew since 183 1 , and liked for my 
sake) : but probably I showed her the Duke of Wellington, whom 

1 Mrs. Carlyle. 



82 THOMAS CARLYLE 

one often used to see there, striding deliberately along, as if home 
from his work, about that hour : him (I almost rather think, that 
same evening), and at any rate, other figures of distinction or 
notoriety. And we said to one another, ''How strange to be in 
big London here; isn't it?" — Our purchase of household kettles 
and saucepans etc. in the mean Ironmongery, so noble in its poverty 
and loyalty on her part, is sad and infinitely lovely to me at this 
moment. 

We had plenty of "company" from the very first: John Mill, 
down from Kensington once a week or oftener; the " Mrs. Austin " 
of those days, so popular and almost famous, on such exiguous basis 
(Translations from the German, poorly done, and of original noth- 
ing that rose far above the rank of twaddle) : ^'femme alors celhhre, " 
as we used to term the phenomenon, parodying some phrase I had 
found in Thiers: Mrs. Austin affected much sisterhood with us 
{affected mainly, though in kind wise) ; and was a cheery, sanguine, 
and generally acceptable member of society, — already up to the 
Marquis of Lansdowne (in a slight sense), much more to all the 
Radical Officials and notables : Charles Buller, Sir W. Molesworth, 
etc. etc. of ^^ alors. '^^ She still lives, this Mrs. Austin, in quiet 
though eclipsed condition: spring last she was in Town for a 
couple of weeks ; and my Dear One went twice to see her, though I 
couldn't manage quite. — Erasmus Darwin, a most diverse kind of 
mortal, came to seek us out very soon ("had heard of Carlyle 
in Germany" etc.) ; and continues ever since to be a quiet house- 
friend, honestly attached; though his visits latterly have been rarer 
and rarer, health so poor, I so occupied, etc. etc. He has some- 
thing of original and sarcastically ingenious in him; one of the 
sincerest, naturally truest, and most modest of men. Elder brother, 
of Charles Darwin (the famed Darwin on Species of these days) , to 
whom I rather prefer him for intellect, had not his health quite 
doomed him to silence and patient idleness ; — Grandsons, both, of 
the ^rst famed Erasmus ("Botanic Garden" etc.), who also seems 
to have gone upon "species" questions; " Omnia ex Conchis'^ 
(all from Oysters) being a dictum of his (even a stamp he sealed 
with, still extant), as the present Erasmus once told me, many 
long years before this of " Darwin on Species" came up among us ! 
Wonderful to me, as indicating the capricious stupidity of mankind; 



LIFE IN LONDON ^2, 

never could read a page of it, or waste the least thought upon 
it. Erasmus Darwin it was who named the late Whewell, seeing 
him sit, all ear (not all assent) at some of my Lectures, "The Har- 
monious Blacksmith;" a really descriptive title. My Dear One 
had a great favour for this honest Darwin always ; many a road, to 
shops and the like, he drove her in his Cab {Darwingium Cahhiim, 
comparable to Georgium Sidus). in those early days, when even the 
charge of Omnibuses was a consideration; and his sparse utterances, 
sardonic often, were a great amusement to her. "A perfect 
gentleman,'' she at once discerned him to be; and of sound worth, 
and kindliness, in the most unaffected form. ''Take me now to 
Oxygen Street; a dyer's shop there !" Darwin, without a wrinkle 
or remark, made for Oxenden Street and drew up at the required 
door. Amusingly admirable to us both, when she came home. 

Our commonest evening sitter, for a good while, was Leigh Hunt, 
who lived close by, and delighted to sit talking with us (free, cheery, 
idly melodious as bird on bough), or listening, with real feeling, to 
her old Scotch tunes on the Piano, and winding up with a frugal 
morsel of Scotch Porridge (endlessly admirable to Hunt) — I think 
I spoke of this above ? Hunt was always accurately dressed, these 
evenings, and had a fine chivalrous gentlemanly carriage, polite, 
affectionate, respectful (especially to her) and yet so free and 
natural. Her brilliancy and faculty he at once recognised, none 
better; but there rose gradually in it, to his astonished eye, 
something of positive, of practically steadfast, which scared him 
off, a good deal ; the like in my own case too, still more ; — which 
he would call "Scotch," "Presbyterian," who knows what; and 
which gradually repelled him, in sorrow, not in anger, quite away 
from us, with rare exceptions, which, in his last years, were almost 
pathetic to us both. Long before this, he had gone to live in Ken- 
sington; — and we scarcely saw him except by accident. His 
Household, while in "4 Upper Cheyne Row," within few steps 
of us here, almost at once disclosed itself to be huggermugger, 
unthrih, and sordid collapse, once for all; and had to be 
associated with on cautious terms ; — while he himself emerged 
out of it in the chivalrous figure I describe. Dark complex- 
ion (a trace of the African, I believe), copious clean strong 
black hair, beautifully-shaped head, fine beaming serious hazel 



84 THOMAS CARLYLE 

eyes; seriousness and intellect the main expression of the face (to 
our surprise at first), — he would lean on his elbow against the 
mantel-piece (fine clean, elastic figure too he had, five feet ten or 
more), and look round him nearly in silence, before taking leave 
for the night : "as if I were a Lar, " said he once, "or a permanent 
Household God here 1" (such his polite Ariel-like way). Another 
time rising from this Lar attitude, he repeated (voice very fine) as 
in sport of parody, yet with something of very sad perceptible: 
"While I to sulphurous and penal fire" — as the last thing before 
vanishing. Poor Hunt ! no more of him. She, I remember, was 
almost in tears during some last visit of his, and kind and pitying as 
a Daughter to the now weak and time-worn old man. . . . 

By much the tenderest and beautifullest reminiscence to me 
out of those years is that of the Lecture times. The vilest welter 
of odious confusions, horrors and repugnancies; to which, mean- 
while, there was compulsion absolute; — and. to which she was 
the one irradiation; noble loving soul, not to be quenched in any 
chaos that might come. Oh, her love to me; her cheering, un- 
affected, useful practicality of help: was not I rich, after all? 
She had a steady hope in me, too, while I myself had habitually 
none (except of the "desperate" kind) ; nay a steady contentment 
with me, and vdth our lot together, let hope be as it might. " Never 
mind him, my Dear," whispered Miss Wilson to her, one day, as 
I stood wriggling in my agony of incipiency, "people like it; the 
more of that, the better does the Lecture prove ! " W^hich was a 
truth; though the poor Sympathiser might, at the moment, feel 
it harsh. This Miss Wilson and her brother still live; opulent, 
fine. Church of England people (scrupulously orthodox to the 
secularities not less than the spiritualities of that creed), and Miss 
Wilson very clever too {i.e. full of strong just insight in her way) ; 
— who had from the first taken to us, and had us much about them 
(Spedding, Maurice, etc. attending) then and for some years 
afterwards ; very desirous to help us, if that could have much done 
it (for indeed, to me, it was always mainly an indigestion purchased 
by a loyal kind of weariness), I have seen Sir James Stephen 
there, but did not then understand him, or that he could be a 
"clever man," as reported by Henry Taylor and other good judges. 
"He shuts his eyes on you," said the elder Spring-Rice (Lord 



LIFE IN LONDON 



85 



Monteagle), "and talks as if he were dictating a Colonial De- 
spatch " (most true ; — " teaching you How Not to do it," as Dickens 
defined afterwards) : one of the pattest things I ever heard from 
Spring-Rice, who had rather a turn for such. Stephen ultimately, 
when on half-pay and a Cambridge Professor, used to come down 
hither pretty often on an evening; and we heard a great deal of 
talk from him, recognisably serious and able, though always in 
that Colonial- Office style, more or less. Colonial-Office being an 
Impotency (as Stephen inarticulately, though he never said or 
whispered it, well knew), what could an earnest and honest kind 
of man do, but try and teach you How not to do it? Stephen 
seemed to me a master in that art. — 

The Lecture time fell in the earlier part of the Sterling Period, 
— which latter must have lasted in all, counting till John's death, 
about ten years (Autumn 1844 when John died). To my Jeannie, 
I think, this was clearly the sunniest and wholesomest element 
in her then outer life. All the Household loved her; and she had 
virtually, by her sense, by her felt loyalty, expressed oftenest in a 
gay mildly quizzing manner, a real influence, a kind of light com- 
mand one might almost call it, willingly yielded her among them. 
Details of this are in print (as I said above). — In the same years, 
Mrs. Buller (Charles's mother) was a very cheerful item to her. 
Mrs. Buller (a whilom Indian Beauty, Wit and finest Fine Lady), 
who had at all times a very recognising eye for talent, and real 
reverence for it, very soon made out something of my Httle woman ; 
and took more and more to her, all the time she hved after. Mrs. 
BuUer's circle was gay and populous at this time (Radical, chiefly 
Radical, lions of every complexion), and we had as much of it as 
we would consent to. I remember being at Leatherhead too ; — 
and, after that, a pleasant rustic week at Troston Parsonage 
(in Suffolk, where Mrs. BuUer's youngest son "served," and 
serves) ; which Mrs. Buller contrived very well to make the best 
of, sending me to ride for three days in Oliver Cromwell's countr>', 
that she might have the Wife more to herself. My Jane must have 
been there altogether, I dare say, near a month (had gone before 
me, returned after me) ; and I regretted never to have seen the 
place again. This must have been in September or October 1842 ; 
Mrs. Welsh's death in early Spring past. I remember well my 



86 THOMAS CARLYLE 

feelings in Ely Cathedral, in the close of sunset or dusk ; the place 
was open, free to me without witnesses ; people seemed to be tuning 
the organ, which went in solemn gusts far aloft; the thought of 
Oliver, and his "Leave off your fooling, and come down, Sir!" ^ 
was almost as if audible to me. Sleepless night, owing to Cathedral 
bells, and strange ride next day to St. Ives, to Hinchinbrook, etc., 
and thence to Cambridge, with thundercloud and lightning dogging 
me to rear, and bursting into torrents few minutes after I got into 
the Hoop Inn. — 

My poor Darling had, for constant accompaniment to all her 
bits of satisfactions, an altogether weak state of health, continually 
breaking down, into violent fits of headache in her best times, and 
in winter-season into cough, etc., in lingering forms of a quite sad 
and exhausting sort. Wonderful to me how she, so sensitive a 
creature, maintained her hoping cheerful humour to such a degree, 
amidst all that; and, except the pain of inevitable sympathy, and 
vague fluttering fears, gave me no pain. Careful always to screen 
me from pain, as I by no means always reciprocally was ; alas, no ; 
miserable egoist in comparison ! At this time I must have been 
in the thick of Cromwell; "four years" of abstruse toil, obscure 
tentations, futile wrestling, and misery, I used to count it had cost 
me, before I took to editing the Letters and Speeches ("to have 
them out of my way") ; which rapidly drained off the sour swamp 
water bodily, and left me, beyond all first expectations, quite free 
of the matter. Often I have thought how miserable my Books 
must have been to her; and how, though they were none of her 
choosing, and had come upon her like ill weather or ill health, she 
at no instant (never once, I do believe) made the least complaint 
of me or my behaviour (often bad, or at least thoughtless and weak) 
under them ! Always some quizzing little lesson, the purport and 
effect of which was to encourage me; never once anything worse. 
Oh, it was noble ; — and I see it so well now, when it is gone from 
me, and no return possible ! 

Cromwell was by much the worst Book-time; till this of 
Friedrich; which indeed was infinitely worse ; in the dregs of our 
strength too ; — and lasted for about thirteen years. She was 

^ Cromwell's Letters and Speeches (Library Edition, 1869), I, 185. 



LIFE IN LONDON 87 

generally in quite weak health, too, and was often, for long weeks 
or months, miserably ill. . . . 

It was strange how she contrived to sift out of such a troublous 
forlorn day as hers, in such case, was, all the available little items ; 
as she was sure to do, — and to have them ready for me in the 
evening when my work was done ; in the prettiest little narrative 
anybody could have given of such things. Never again shall I 
have such melodious, humanly beautiful Half-hours; they were the 
rainbow of my poor dripping day^ — and reminded me that there 
otherwise was a Sun. At this time, and all along, she "did all 
the society;" was all brightness to the one or two (oftenest rather 
dull and prosaic fellows, for all the better sort respected my seclu- 
sion, especially during that last Friedrich time), whom I needed 
to see on my affairs in hand, or who, with more of brass than others, 
managed to intrude upon me: for these she did, in their several 
kinds, her very best ; all of her own people, whom I might be apt 
to feel wearisome (dislike any of them I never did, or his or her 
discharge from service would have swiftly followed), she kept 
beautifully out of my way, saving my "poHteness" withal: a very 
perfect skill she had in all this. And took my dark toiling periods, 
however long sullen and severe they might be, with a loyalty and 
heart-acquiescence that never failed. The heroic little soul ! 

Latter-Day Pamphlet time, and especially the time that pre- 
ceded it (1848 etc.) must have been very sore and heavy : my heart 
was long overloaded with the meanings at length uttered there, 
and no way of getting them set forth would answer. I forget what 
ways I tried, or thought of; Times Newspaper was one (alert, 
airy, rather vacant editorial gentleman I remember going to once, 
in Printing House Square) ; but this way of course, proved hy- 
pothetical merely, — as all others did, till we, as last shift, gave 
the rough MSS. to Chapman (in Forster's company one winter 
Sunday). About half oi the ultimately printed might be in Chap- 
man's hands ; but there was much manipulation as well as addition 
needed. Forster soon fell away, I could perceive, into terror and 
surprise; — as indeed everybody did: "A lost man!" thought 
everybody. Not she at any moment; much amused by the out- 
side pother, she ; and glad to see me getting delivered of my black 
electricities and consuming fires, in that way. Strange letters 



8S THOMAS CARLYLE 

came to us, during those nine months of pamphleteering ; strange 
visitors (of moonstruck unprofitable type for most part), who had, 
for one reason or another, been each of them wearing himself 
half-mad on some one of the public scandals I was recognizing 
and denouncing. I still remember some of their faces, and the 
look their paper bundles had. She got a considerable entertain- 
ment out of all that ; went along with me in everything (probably 
counselling a Httle here and there; a censorship well worth my 
regarding, and generally adoptable, here as everywhere) ; and 
minded no whit any results that might follow this evident speaking 
of the truth. Somebody, writing from India I think, and clearly 
meaning kindness, "did hope" (some time afterwards) "the tide 
would turn, and this lamentable Hostility of the Press die away 
into friendship again; " at which I remember our innocent laugh- 
ter, — ignorant till then what "The Press's" feelings were, and 
leaving "The Press" very welcome to them then. Neuberg 
helped me zealously, as volunteer amanuensis etc., through all 
this business; but I know not that even he approved it all, or 
any of it to the bottom. In the whole world I had one com- 
plete Approver; in that, as in other cases, one; and it was 
worth all. 

On the back of Latter-Day Pamphlets followed Life of Sterling; 
a very quiet thing; but considerably disapproved of too, as I 
learned ; and utterly revolting to the Religious people in particular 
(to my surprise rather than otherwise) : " Doesn't believe in us, 
then, either?" Not he, for certain; canH^ if you will know! 
Others urged disdainfully, " What has Sterhng done that he should 
have a Lifef^ ^''Induced Carlyle somehow to write him one!" 
answered she once (to the Ferguses, I think) in an arch airy way, 
which I can well fancy; and which shut up the question there. 
The book was afterwards greatly praised, — again, on rather weak 
terms, I doubt. What now will please me best in it, and alone will, 
was then an accidental quality, — the authentic light, under the 
due conditions, that is thrown by it on her. Oh, my Dear One; 
sad is my soul for the loss of Thee, and will to the end be, as I 
compute ! Lonelier creature there is not henceforth in this world ; 
neither person, work, nor thing going on in it that is of any value, 
in comparison, or even at all. Death I feel almost daily in express 



LIFE IN LONDON 89 

fact, Death is the one haven; and have occasionally a kind of 
kingship, sorrowful, but sublime, almost godlike, in the feeling 
that that is nigh. Sometimes the image of Her, gone in her car 
of victory (in that beautiful death), and as if nodding to me with 
a smile, "I am gone, loved one; work a little longer, if thou still 
canst ; if not, follow ! There is no baseness, and no misery here. 
Courage, courage to the last ! " — that, sometimes, as in this mo- 
ment, is inexpressibly beautiful to me, and comes nearer to bringing 
tears than it once did. 

In 1852 had come the new-modelling of our House; — attended 
with infinite dusty confusion (head-carpenter stupid, though hon- 
est, fell ill, etc. etc.) ; confusion falling upon her more than me, 
and at length upon her altogether. She was the architect, guiding 
and directing and contriving genius, in all that enterprise, seem- 
ingly so foreign to her. But, indeed, she was ardent in it; and she 
had a talent that way which was altogether unique in my expe- 
rience. An "eye" first of all; equal in correctness to a joiner's 
square, — this, up almost from her childhood, as I understood. 
Then a sense of order, sense of beauty, of wise and thrifty con- 
venience; — sense of wisdom altogether in fact; for that was it! 
A human intellect shining luminous in every direction, the highest 
and the lowest (as I remarked above) ; in childhood she used to be 
sent to seek when things fell .lost; "the best seeker of us all," 
her Father would say, or look (as she thought) : for me also she 
sought everything, with such success as I never saw elsewhere. 
It was she who widened our poor drawing-room (as if by a stroke 
of genius) and made it (zealously, at the partial expense of three 
feet from her own bedroom) into what it now is, one of the prettiest 
little drawing-rooms I ever saw, and made the whole house into what 
it now is. How frugal, too, and how modest about it ! House was 
hardly finished, when there arose that of the "Demon-Fowls," 
— as she appropriately named them : macaws. Cochin-chinas, 
endless concert of crowing, cackHng, shrieking roosters (from a 
bad or misled neighbour, next door) which cut us off from sleep 
or peace, at times altogether, and were like to drive me mad, and 
her through me, through sympathy with me. From which also 
she was my deliverer, — had delivered and contrived to deliver 
me from hundreds of such things (Oh, my beautiful little Alcides, 



90 



THOMAS CARLYLE 



in the new days of Anarchy and the Mud-gods, threatening to 
crush down a poor man, and kill him with his work still on hand !) 
I remember well her setting off, one winter morning, from the 
Grange on this enterprise ; — probably having thought of it most 
of the night (sleep denied), she said to me next morning the first 
thing: "Dear, we must extinguish those Demon- Fowls, or they 
will extinguish us ! Rent the house (No. 6, proprietor mad etc. 
etc.) ourselves ; it is but some 40/. a year, — pack away those vile 
people, and let it stand empty. I will go this very day upon it, if 
you assent ! " And she went accordingly ; and slew altogether this 
Lerna Hydra; at far less expense than taking the house, nay al- 
most at no expense at all, except by her fine intellect, tact, just 
discernment, swiftness of decision, and general nobleness of mind 
(in short). Oh, my bonny little woman; mine only in memory 
now! — 

I left the Grange two days after her, on this occasion ; hastening 
through London, gloomy of mind ; to see my dear old Mother yet 
once (if I might) before she died. She had, for many months 
before, been evidently and painfully sinking away, — under no 
disease, but the ever-increasing infirmities of eighty-three years of 
tirjie. She had expressed no desire to see me ; but her love from 
my birth upwards, under all scenes and circumstances, I knew 
to be emphatically a Mother's. I walked from the Kirtle-bridge 
("Galls") Station that dim winter morning; my one thought, 
"Shall I see her yet alive?" She was still there; weary, very 
weary, and wishing to be at rest. I think she only at times knew 
me ; so bewildering were her continual distresses ; Once she entirely 
forgot me ; then, in a minute or two, asked my pardon — ah me ! 
ah me! It was my Mother and not my Mother; the last pale 
rim or sickle of the moon, which had once been full, now sinking 
in the dark seas. This lasted only three days. Saturday night 
she had her full faculties, but was in nearly unendurable misery ; 
not breath sufficient etc., etc. : John tried various reliefs, had at 
last to give a few drops of laudanum, which eased the misery, and 
in an hour or two brought sleep. All next day she lay asleep, 
breathing equally but heavily, — her face grand and solemn, 
almost severe, like a marble statue; about four p.m. the breathing 
suddenly halted ; recommenced for half an instant, then fluttered. 



LIFE IN LONDON 



91 



— ceased.^ "All the days of my appointed time," she had often 
said, "will I wait, till my change come.''' The most beautifully 
religious soul I ever knew. Proud enough she was too, though 
piously humble; and full of native intellect, humour, etc., though 
all undeveloped. On the religious side, looking into the very heart 
of the matter, I always reckon her rather superior to my Jane, who 
in other shapes and with far different exemplars and conditions, 
had a great deal of noble religion too. Her death filled me with 
a kind of dim amazement, and crush of confused sorrows, which 
were very painful, but not so sharply pathetic as I might have 
expected. It was the earliest terror of my childhood that I "might 
lose my Mother;" and it had gone with me all my days: — But, 
and that is probably the whole account of it, I was then sunk in 
the miseries of Friedrich etc. etc., in many miseries; and was then 
fifty-eight years of age. — It is strange to me, in these very days, 
how peaceable, though still sacred and tender, the memory of my 
Mother now lies in me. (This very morning, I got into dreaming 
confused nightmare stuff about some funeral and her; not hers, 
nor obviously my Jane's, seemingly my Father's rather, and she 
sending me on it, — the saddest bewildered stuff. What a dismal 
debasing and confusing element is that of a sick body on the human 
soul or thinking part !) 

It was in 1852 (September- October, for about a month) that I 
had first seen Germany, — gone on my first errand as to Friedrich : 
there was a second, five years afterwards; this time it was to in- 
quire (of Preuss and Co.) ; to look about me, search for books, 
portraits, etc. etc. I went from Scotsbrig (my dear old Mother 
painfully weak, though I had no thought it would be the last time 
I should see her afoot) ; — from Scotsbrig by Leith for Rotterdam, 
Koln, Bonn (Neuberg's) ; — and on the whole never had nearly so 
(outwardly) unpleasant a journey in my life ; till the second and last 
I made thither. But the Chelsea establishment was under car- 
penters, painters; till those disappeared, no work possible, scarcely 
any living possible (though my brave woman did make it possible 
without complaint) : " Stay so many weeks, all painting at least 
shall then be off!" I returned, near broken-down utterly, at the 
set time; and alas, was met by a foul dabblement of paint oozing 

1 Carlyle's mother died at Scotsbrig, Ecclefechan, December 25, 1853. 



92 THOMAS CARLYLE 

downstairs : the painters had proved treacherous to her; time could 
not be kept ! It was the one instance of such a thing here ; and, 
except the first sick surprise, I now recollect no more of it. 

"Mamma, wine makes cosy !" said the bright little one, perhaps 
between two and three years old, her Mother, after some walk 
with sprinkling of wet or the like, having given her a dram-glass 
of wine on their getting home: "Mamma, wine makes cosyT^ 
said the small silver voice, gaily sipping, getting its new bits of 
insight into natural philosophy ! What " pictures " has my Beauti- 
ful One left me ; — what joys can surround every well-ordered 
human hearth. I said long since, I never saw so beautiful a child- 
hood. Her little bit of a first chair, its wee wee arms, etc., visible 
to me in the closet at this moment, is still here, and always was; 
I have looked at it hundreds of times; from of old^ with many 
thoughts. No daughter or son of hers was to sit there; so it had 
been appointed us, my Darling. I have no Book a thousandth-part 
so beautiful as Thou; but these were our only "Children," — 
and, in a true sense, these were verily ours; and will perhaps 
live some time in the world, after we are both gone ; — and be of 
no damage to the poor brute chaos of a world, let us hope! 
The Will of the Supreme shall be accomplished: Amen. But to 
proceed. 

Shortly after my return from Germany (next summer I think, 
while the Cochin-chinas were at work, and we could not quit the 
house, having spent so much on it, and got a long lease), there 
began a new still worse hurly-burly of the building kind; that of 
the new top-story, — whole area of the house to be thrown into 
one sublime garret-room, lighted from above, thirty feet by thirty 
say, and at least eleven feet high; double-doored, doubled- win- 
dowed ; impervious to sound, to — in short, to everything but self 
and work ! I had my grave doubts about all this ; but John 
Chorley, in his friendly zeal, warmly urged it on; pushed, super- 
intended ; — and was a good deal disgusted with my dismal 
experience of the result. Something really good might have come 
of it in a scene where good and faithful work was to be had on the 
part of all, from architect downwards; but here, from all (except 
one good young man of the carpenter trade, whom I at length 
noticed thankfully in small matters), the "work," of planning to 



LIFE IN LONDON go 

begin with, and then of executing, in all its details, was mere work 
of Belial, i.e. of the Father of LIES; such "work" as I had not 
conceived the possibility of among the sons of Adam till then. 
By degrees, I perceived it to be the ordinary English "work" of 
this epoch ; — and, with manifold reflections, deep as Tophet, 
on the outlooks this offered for us all, endeavoured to be silent as to 
my own little failure. My new illustrious "Study" was definable 
as the least inhabitable, and most entirely detestable and despic- 
able bit of human workmanship in that kind. Sad and odious to 
me very. But, by many and long-continued efforts, with endless 
botherations which lasted for two or three years after (one winter 
starved by "Arnott's improved grate,'^ I recollect), I did get it 
patched together into something of supportability ; and continued, 
though under protest, to inhabit it during all working hours, as I 
had indeed from the first done. The whole of the now printed 
Friedrich was written there (or in summer in the back court and 
garden, when driven down by baking heat) ; much rawer matter, I 
think, was tentatively on paper, before this sublime new "Study." 
Friedrich once done, I quitted the place for ever; and it is now a 
bedroom for the servants. The "architect" for this beautiful bit 
of masonry and carpentry was one "Parsons," really a clever 
creature, I could see, but swimming as for dear life in a mere 
"Mother of Dead Dogs" (ultimately did become bankrupt); his 
men of all types, Irish hodmen and upwards, for real mendacity 
of hand, for drunkenness, greediness, mutinous nomadism, and 
anarchic malfeasance throughout, excelled all experience or con- 
ception. Shut the lid on their " unexampled prosperity " and them, 
for evermore. 

The sufferings of my poor little woman, throughout all this, must 
have been great, though she whispered nothing of them, — the 
rather, as this was my enterprise (both the Friedrich and it) ; — 
indeed it was by her address and invention that I got my sooterkin 
of a "study" improved out of its worst blotches; it was she, for 
example, that went silently to Bramah's smith people, and got me a 
fireplace, of merely human sort, which actually warmed the room 
and sent Arnott's miracle about its business. But undoubtedly 
that Friedrich affair, with its many bad adjuncts, was much the 
worst we ever had; and sorely tried us both. It lasted thirteen 



94 THOMAS CARLYLE 

years or more. To me a desperate dead-lift pull all that time; 
my whole strength devoted to it; alone, withdrawn from all the 
world (except some bores who would take no hint, almost nobody 
came to see me, nor did I wish almost anybody then left living 
for me), all the world withdrawing from me; I desperate of ever 
getting through (not to speak of "succeeding"); left solitary 
"with the nightmares" (as I sometimes expressed it), "hugging 
unclean creatures" (Prussian Blockheadism) "to my bosom, 
trying to caress and flatter their secret out of them !" Why do I 
speak of all this ? It is now become coprolith to me, insignificant 
as the dung of a thousand centuries ago: I did get through, 
thank God ; let it now wander into the belly of oblivion for ever. 
But what I do still, and shall more and more, remember vdth loving 
admiration is her behaviour in it. She was habitually in the fee- 
blest health; often, for long whiles, grievousl)^ ill. Yet by an 
alchemy all her own, she had extracted grains as of gold out of 
every day, and seldom or never failed to have something bright and 
pleasant to tell me, when I reached home after my evening ride, 
the most fordone of men. In all, I rode, during that book, some 
30,000 miles, much of it (all the winter part of it) under cloud of 
night, sun just setting when I mounted. All the rest of the day, 
I sat silent aloft ; insisting upon work, and such work, invitissimd 
Minerva for that matter. Home between five and six, with mud 
mackintoshes off, and, the nightmares locked up for a while, I 
tried for an hour's sleep before my (solitary, dietetic, altogether 
simple) bit of dinner; but first always came up for half an hour to 
the drawing-room and Her; where a bright kindly fire was sure 
to be burning (candles hardly lit, all in trustful chiaroscuro) , and a 
spoonful of brandy in water, with a pipe of tobacco (which I had 
learned to take sitting on the rug, with my back to the jamb, and 
door never so little open, so that all the smoke, if I was careful, 
went up the chimney) : this was the one bright portion of my 
black day. Oh, those evening half-hours, how beautiful and 
blessed they were, — not awaiting me now on my home-coming, 
for the last ten weeks ! She was oftenest reclining on the sofa ; 
wearied enough, she too, with her day's doings and endurings. 
But her history, even of what was bad, had such grace and truth, 
and spontaneous tinkling melody of a naturally cheerful and loving 



LIFE IN LONDON 



95 



heart, that I never anywhere enjoyed the like. Her courage, 
patience, silent heroism, meanwhile, must often have been im- 
mense. Within the last two years or so she has told me about 
my talk to her of the Battle of Mollwitz on these occasions, while 
that was on the anvil. She was lying on the sofa; weak, but I 
knew little how weak, and patient, kind, quiet and good as ever. 
After tugging and wriggling through what inextricable labyrinth 
and Sloughs-of-despond, I still remember, it appears I had at last 
conquered Mollwitz, saw it all clear ahead and round me, and took 
to telling her about it, in my poor bit of joy, night after night. 
I recollect she answered little, though kindly always. Privately, 
she at that time felt convinced she was dying : — dark winter, and 
such the weight of misery and utter decay of strength ; — and, 
night after night, my theme to her, Mollwitz 1 This she owned 
to me, within the last year or two ; — which how could I listen to 
without shame and abasement ? Never in my pretended-superior 
kind of life, have I done, for love of any creature, so supreme a 
kind of thing. It touches me at this moment with penitence and 
humiliation, yet with a kind of soft religious blessedness too. — 
She read the first two volumes of Friedrich, much of it in printer's 
sheets (while on visit to the aged Misses Donaldson at Hadding- 
ton) ; her applause (should not I collect her fine Notekins and 
reposit them here ?) was beautiful and as sunlight to me, — for 
I knew it was sincere withal, and unerringly straight upon the blot, 
however exaggerated by her great love of me. The other volumes 
(hardly even the third, I think) she never read, — I knew too well 
why; and submitted without murmur, save once or twice perhaps 
a little quiz on the subject, which did not afflict her, either. Too 
weak, too weak by far, for a dismal enterprise of that kind, as I 
knew too well! But those Haddington visits were very beautiful 
to her (and to me through her letters and her) ; and by that time 
we were over the hill and "the worst of our days were past'' (as 
poor Irving used to give for toast, long ago), — worst of them 
past, though we did not yet quite know it. 



96 CHARLES DICKENS 

CHARLES DICKENS 

HARD EXPERIENCES IN BOYHOOD 

[From The Life of Charles Dickens, by John Forster, Book I, Chaps. I 
and II. Chapman and Hall, London, 1872. For the Life of Dickens, see 
post, p. 569. 

*'. . . . This Third Volume throws a new light and character to me over 
the Work at large. I incline to consider this Biography as taking rank, in 
essential respects, parallel to Boswell himself, though on widely different 
grounds. Boswell, by those genial abridgements and vivid face to face 
pictures of Johnson's thoughts, conversational ways, and modes of appear- 
ance among his fellow-creatures, has given, as you often hear me say, such 
a delineation of a man's existence as was never given by another man. By 
quite different resources, by those sparkling, clear, and sunny utterances of 
Dickens's own (bits of aw^o-biography unrivalled in clearness and credibility) 
which were at your disposal, and have been intercalated every now and 
then, you have given to every intelligent eye the power of looking down to 
the very bottom of Dickens's mode of existing in this world; and, I say, 
have performed a feat which, except in Boswell, the unique, I know not 
where to parallel. So long as Dickens is interesting to his fellow -men, here 
will be seen, face to face, what Dickens's manner of existing was. His bright 
and joyful sympathy with everything around him; his steady practicality, 
withal ; the singularly solid business talent he continually had ; and, deeper 
than all, if one has the eye to see deep enough, dark, fateful, silent elements, 
tragical to look upon, and hiding, amid dazzling radiances as of the sun, 
the elements of death itself. Those two American journeys especially tran- 
scend in tragic interest, to a thinking reader, most things one has seen in 
writing!" — Thomas Carlyle, Letter to the Author, 16 February, 1874.] 

In Bayham-street, meanwhile, affairs were going on badly; the 
poor boy's visits to his uncle, while the latter was still kept a pris- 
oner by his accident, were interrupted by another attack of fever; 
and on his recovery the mysterious ' deed ' had again come upper- 
most. His father's resources were so low, and all his expedients 
so thoroughly exhausted, that trial was to be made whether his 
mother might not come to the rescue. The time was arrived for 
her to exert herself, she said; and she 'must do something.' 
The godfather down at Limehouse was reported to have an Indian 
connection. People in the East Indies always sent their children 
home to be educated. She would set up a school. They would 
all grow rich by it. And then, thought the sick boy, 'perhaps 
even I might go to school myself.' 

A house was soon found at number four, Gower-street north; 



HARD EXPERIENCES IN BOYHOOD gy 

a large brass plate on the door announced Mrs. Dickens's Estab- 
lishment; and the result I can give in the exact words of the then 
small actor in the comedy, whose hopes it had raised so high. 
' I left, at a great many other doors, a great many circulars calling 
attention to the merits of the establishment. Yet nobody ever 
came to school, nor do I recollect that anybody ever proposed 
to come, or that the least preparation was made to receive any- 
body. But I know that we got on very badly with the butcher 
and baker ; that very often we had not too much for dinner ; and 
that at last my father was arrested.' The interval between the 
sponging-house and the prison was passed by the sorrowful lad 
in running errands and carrying messages for the prisoner, de- 
livered with swollen eyes and through shining tears ; and the last 
words said to him by his father before he was finally carried to 
the Marshalsea, were to the effect that the sun was set upon him 
for ever. *I really believed at the time,' said Dickens to me, 
'that they had broken my heart.' He took afterwards ample 
revenge for this false alarm by making all the world laugh at them 
in David Copperfield. 

The readers of Mr. Micawber's history who remember David's 
first visit to the Marshalsea prison, and how upon seeing the turn- 
key he recalled the turnkey in the blanket in Roderick Random, 
will read with curious interest what follows, written as a personal 
experience of fact two or three years before the fiction had even 
entered into his thoughts. 

'My father was waiting for me in the lodge, and we went up 
to his room (on the top story but one), and cried very much. 
And he told me, I remember, to take warning by the Marshal- 
sea, and to observe that if a man had twenty pounds a-year, and 
spent nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence, he would 
be happy; but that a shilling spent the other way would make 
him wretched. I see the fire we sat before, now; with two bricks 
inside the rusted grate, one on each side, to prevent its burning 
too many coals. Some other debtor shared the room with him, 
who came in by-and-by; and as the dinner was a joint-stock 
repast, I was sent up to " Captain Porter" in the room over- 
head, with Mr. Dickens's compliments, and I was his son, and 
could he. Captain P, lend m.e a knife and fork ? 

H 



98 CHARLES DICKENS 

' Captain Porter lent the knife and fork, with his compHments 
in return. There was a very dirty lady in his little room; and two 
wan girls, his daughters, with shock heads of hair. I thought I 
should not have liked to borrow Captain Porter's comb. The 
Captain himself was in the last extremity of shabbiness; and if 
I could draw at all, I would draw an accurate portrait of the 
old, old, brown great-coat he wore, with no other coat below it. 
His whiskers were large. I saw his bed rolled up in a corner; 
and what plates, and dishes, and pots he had, on a shelf; and 
I knew (God knows how) that the two girls with the shock heads 
were Captain Porter's natural children, and that the dirty lady 
was not married to Captain P. My timid, wondering station 
on his threshold, was not occupied more than a couple of min- 
utes, I dare say; but I came down again to the room below 
with all this as surely in my knowledge, as the knife and fork were 
in my hand.' 

How there was something agreeable and gipsy-like in the dinner 
after all, and how he took back the Captain's knife and fork early 
in the afternoon, and how he went home to comfort his mother 
with an account of his visit, David Copperfield has also accurately 
told. Then, at home, came many miserable daily struggles that 
seemed to last an immense time, yet did not perhaps cover many 
weeks. Almost everything by degrees was sold or pawned, little 
Charles being the principal agent in those sorrowful transactions. 
Such of the books as had been brought from Chatham, Peregrine 
Pickle, Roderick Random, Tom Jones, Humphrey Clinker, and all 
the rest, went first. They were carried off from the little chiffonier, 
which his father called the library, to a bookseller in the Hamp- 
stead-road, the same that David Copperfield describes as in the 
City-road ; and the account of the sales, as they actually occurred 
and were told to me long before David was born, was reproduced 
word for word in his imaginary narrative. 'The keeper of this 
bookstall, who lived in a little house behind it, used to get tipsy 
every night, and to be violently scolded by his wife every morn- 
ing. More than once, when I went there early, I had audience 
of him in a turn-up bedstead, with a cut in his forehead or a 
black eye, bearing witness to his excesses over night (I am afraid 
he was quarrelsome in his drink) ; and he, with a shaking hand. 



HARD EXPERIENCES IN BOYHOOD 



99 



endeavouring to find the needful shillings in one or other of the 
pockets of his clothes, which lay upon the floor, while his wife, 
with a baby in her arms and her shoes down at heel, never left 
off rating him. Sometimes he had lost his money, and then 
he would ask me to call again ; but his wife had always got some 
(had taken his, I dare say, while he was drunk), and secretly 
completed the bargain on the stairs, as we went down together. ' 

The same pawnbroker's shop, too, which w^as so well known to 
David, became not less familiar to Charles; and a good deal of 
notice was here taken of him by the pawnbroker, or by his prin- 
cipal clerk who officiated behind the counter, and who, while 
making out the duplicate, liked of all things to hear the lad con- 
jugate a Latin verb, and translate or decline his musa and dominus. 
Everything to this accompaniment went gradually; until at last, 
even of the furniture of Gower-street number four, there was 
nothing left except a few chairs, a kitchen table, and some beds. 
Then they encamped, as it w^ere, in the two parlours of the emptied 
house, and lived there night and day. 

Allwhichisbuttheprelude to what remains to be described. . . . 

[In 1847,] I learnt in all their detail the incidents that 
had been so painful to him, and what then was said to me or 
written respecting them revealed the story of his boyhood. The 
idea of David Copperfield, which was to take all the world into his 
confidence, had not at this time occurred to him ; but what it had 
so startled me to know, his readers were afterwards told with only 
such change or addition as for the time might sufficiently disguise 
himself under cover of his hero. For, the poor little lad, with 
good abihty and a most sensitive nature, turned at the age of ten 
into a ' labouring hind ' in the service of ' Murdstone and Grinby,' 
and conscious already of what made it seem very strange to him 
that he could so easily have been thrown away at such an age, was 
indeed himself. His was the secret agony of soul at finding him- 
self ' companion to Mick Walker and Mealy Potatoes, ' and his the 
tears that mingled with the water in which he and they rinsed and 
washed out bottles. It had all been written, as fact, before he 
thought of any other use for it; and it was not until several 
months later, when the fancy of David Copperfield, itself suggested 
by what he had so written of his early troubles, began to take 



lOO CHARLES DICKENS 

shape in his mind, that he abandoned his first intention of writing 
his own hfe. Those warehouse experiences fell then so aptly into 
the subject he had chosen, that he could not resist the temptation 
of immediately using them; and the manuscript recording them, 
which was but the first portion of what he had designed to write, 
was embodied in the substance of the eleventh and earlier chapters 
of his novel. What already had been sent to me, however, and 
proof-sheets of the novel interlined at the time, enable me now to 
separate the fact from the fiction; and to supply to the story of 
the author's childhood those passages, omitted from the book, 
which, apart from their illustration of the growth of his character, 
present to us a picture of tragical suffering, and of tender as 
well as humorous fancy, unsurpassed in even the wonders of his 
published writings. 

The person indirectly responsible for the scenes to be described 
was the young relative James Lamert, the cousin by his aunt's 
marriage of whom I have made frequent mention, who got up the 
plays at Chatham, and after passing at Sandhurst had been living 
with the family in Bayham-street in the hope of obtaining a com- 
mission in the army. This did not come until long afterwards, 
when, in consideration of his father's services, he received it, and 
relinquished it then in favour of a younger brother; but he had 
meanwhile, before the family removed from Camden-town, ceased 
to live with them. The husband of a sister of his (of the same 
name as himself, being indeed his cousin, George Lamert), a man 
of some property, had recently embarked in an odd sort of com- 
mercial speculation; and had taken him into his office, and his 
house, to assist in it. I give now the fragment of the autobiography 
of Dickens. 

'This speculation was a rivalry of "Warren's Blacking, 30, 
Strand," — at that time very famous. One Jonathan Warren (the 
famous one was Robert), living at 30, Hungerford-stairs, or 
market. Strand (for I forget which it was called then), claimed 
to have been the original inventor or proprietor of the blacking 
recipe, and to have been deposed and ill-used by his renowned 
relation. At last he put himself in the way of selling his recipe, 
and his name, and his 30, Hungerford-stairs, Strand (30, Strand, 
very large, and the intermediate direction very small), for an 



HARD EXPERIENCES IN BOYHOOD loi 

annuity; and he set forth by his agents that a Httle capital would 
make a great business of it. The man of some property was 
found in George Lamert, the cousin and brother-in-law of James. 
He bought this right and title, and went into the blacking busi- 
ness and the blacking premises. 

' — In an evil hour for me, as I often bitterly thought. Its 
chief manager, James Lamert, the relative who had lived with 
us in Bayham-street, seeing how I was employed from day to 
day, and knowing what our domestic circumstances then were, 
proposed that I should go into the blacking warehouse, to be as 
useful as I could, at a salary, I think, of six shillings a week. I 
am not clear whether it was six or seven. I am inclined to be- 
lieve, from my uncertainty on this head, that it was six at first, 
and seven afterwards. At any rate the offer was accepted very 
willingly by my father and mother, and on a Monday morning I 
went down to the blacking warehouse to begin my business life. 

'It is wonderful to me how I could have been so easily cast 
away at such an age. It is wonderful to me, that, even after my 
descent into the poor little drudge I had been since we came to 
London, no one had compassion enough on me — a child of 
singular abilities, quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt, bodily or 
mentally — to suggest that something might have been spared, as 
certainly it might have been, to place me at any common school. 
Our friends, I take it, were tired out. No one made any sign. 
My father and mother were quite satisfied. They could hardly 
have been more so, if I had been twenty years of age, distinguished 
at a grammar-school, and going to Cambridge. 

'The blacking warehouse was the last house on the left-hand 
side of the way, at old Hungerford-stairs. It was a crazy, tumble- 
down old house, abutting of course on the river, and literally 
overrun with rats. Its wainscotted rooms, and its rotten floors 
and staircase, and the old grey rats swarming down in the cel- 
lars, and the sound of their squeaking and scuffling coming up 
the stairs at all times, and the dirt and decay of the place, 
rise up visibly before me, as if I were there again. The counting- 
house was on the first floor, looking over the coal-barges and the 
river. There was a recess in it, in which I was to sit and work. 
My work was to cover the pots of paste-blacking; first with a 



I02 CHARLES DICKENS 

piece of oil-paper, and then with a piece of blue paper; to tie 
them round with a string; and then to clip the paper close and 
neat, all round, until it looked as smart as a pot of ointment 
from an apothecary's shop. When a certain number of grosses 
of pots had attained this pitch of perfection, I was to paste on 
each a printed label; and then go on again with more pots. 
Two or three other boys were kept at similar duty downstairs 
on similar wages. One of them came up, in a ragged apron and 
a paper cap, on the first Monday morning, to show me the trick 
of using the string and tying the knot. His name was Bob Fagin ; 
and I took the liberty of using his name, long afterwards, in 
Oliver Twist. 

'Our relative had kindly arranged to teach me something in 
the dinner-hour; from twelve to one, I think it was; every day. 
But an arrangement so incompatible with counting-house busi- 
ness soon died away, from no fault of his or mine; and for the 
same reason, my small work-table, and my grosses of pots, my 
papers, string, scizzors, paste-pot, and labels, by little and little, 
vanished out of the recess in the counting-house, and kept com- 
pany with the other small work-tables, grosses of pots, papers, 
string, scizzors, and paste-pots, downstairs. It was not long, 
before Bob Fagin and I, and another boy whose name was Paul 
Green, but who was currently believed to have been christened 
Poll (a belief which I transferred, long afterwards again, to Mr. 
Sweedlepipe, in Martin Chuzzlewit), worked generally, side by 
side. Bob Fagin was an orphan, and lived with his brother-in- 
law, a waterman. Poll Green's father had the additional dis- 
tinction of being a fireman, and was employed at Drury-lane 
theatre; where another relation of Poll's, I think his little sister, 
did imps in the pantomimes. 

'No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk 
into this companionship; compared these every day associates 
with those of my happier childhood; and felt my early hopes of 
growing up to be a learned and distinguished man, crushed in 
my breast. The deep remembrance of the sense I had of being 
utterly neglected and hopeless; of the shame I felt in my posi- 
tion; of the misery it was to my young heart to believe that, 
day by day, what I had learned, and thought, and delighted 



HARD EXPERIENCES IN BOYHOOD 103 

in, and raised my fancy and my emulation up by, was passing 
away from me, never to be brought back any more; cannot be 
written. My whole nature was so penetrated with the grief and 
humihation of such considerations, that even now, famous and 
caressed and happy, I often forget in my dreams that I have a 
dear wife and children; even that I am a man; and wander 
desolately back to that time of my life. 

'My mother and my brothers and sisters (excepting Fanny in 
the royal academy of music) were still encamped, with a young 
servant-girl from Chatham-workhouse, in the two parlours in the 
emptied house in Gower-street north. It was a long way to go 
and return within the dinner-hour, and, usually, I either carried 
my dinner with me, or went and bought it at some neighbouring 
shop. In the latter case, it was commonly a saveloy and a penny 
loaf; sometimes, a fourpenny plate of beef from a cook's shop; 
sometimes, a plate of bread and cheese, and a glass of beer, from 
a miserable old public-house over the way: the Swan, if I 
remember right, or the Swan and something else that I have 
forgotten. Once, I remember tucking my own bread (which I 
had brought from home in the morning) under my arm, wrapped 
up in a piece of paper like a book, and going into the best din- 
ing-room in Johnson's alamode beef-house in Clare-court Drury- 
lane, and magnificently ordering a small plate of alamode beef 
to eat with it. What the waiter thought of such a strange little 
apparition, coming in all alone, I don't know; but I can see 
him now, staring at me as I ate my dinner, and bringing up 
the other waiter to look. I gave him a halfpenny, and I wish, 
now, that he hadn't taken it.' 

I lose here for a little while the fragment of direct narrative, 
but I perfectly recollect that he used to describe Saturday night 
as his great treat. It was a grand thing to walk home with six 
shillings in his pocket, and to look in at the shop windows, and 
think what it would buy. Hunt's roasted corn, as a British and 
patriotic substitute for cofifee, was in great vogue just then; and 
the httle fellow used to buy it, and roast it on the Sunday. There 
was a cheap periodical of selected pieces called the Portfolio, 
which he had also a great fancy for taking home with him. The 
new proposed 'deed,' meanwhile, had failed to propitiate his 



I04 CHARLES DICKENS 

father's creditors; all hope of arrangement passed away; and the 
end was that his mother and her encampment in Gower-street 
north broke up and went to live in the Marshalsea. I am able 
at this point to resume his own account. 

'The key of the house was sent back to the landlord, who was 
very glad to get it; and I (small Cain that I was, except that I 
had never done harm to any one) was handed over as a lodger 
to a reduced old lady, long known to our family, in Little- 
college-street, Camden-town, who took children in to board, and 
had once done so at Brighton; and who, with a few alterations 
and embellishments, unconsciously began to sit for Mrs. Pipchin 
in Dombey when she took in me. 

' She had a Httle brother and sister under her care then ; some- 
body's natural children, who were very irregularly paid for; and 
a widow's httle son. The two boys and I slept in the same 
room. My own exclusive breakfast, of a penny cottage loaf and 
a pennyworth of milk, I provided for myself. I kept another 
small loaf, and a quarter of a pound of cheese, on a particular 
shelf of a particular cupboard; to make my supper on when I 
came back at night. They made a hole in the six or seven shil- 
Hngs, I know well; and I was out at the blacking warehouse 
all day, and had to support myself upon that money all the 
week. I suppose my lodging was paid for, by my father. I 
certainly did not pay it myself; and I certainly had no other 
assistance whatever (the making of my clothes, I think, ex- 
cepted), from Monday morning until Saturday night. No advice, 
no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no support, from 
any one that I can call to mind, so help me God. 

'Sundays, Fanny and I passed in the prison. I was at the 
academy in Tenterden-street, Hanover-square, at nine o'clock 
in the morning, to fetch her; and we walked back there together, at 
night. 

' I was so young and childish, and so little qualified — how 
could I be otherwise ? — to undertake the whole charge of my 
own existence, that, in going to Hungerford-stairs of a morning, 
I could not resist the stale pastry put out at half-price on trays 
at the confectioners' doors in Tottenham-court-road; and I often 
spent in that, the money I should have kept for my dinner. 



HARD EXPERIENCES IN BOYHOOD 



105 



Then I went without my dinner, or bought a roll, or a slice of 
pudding. There were two pudding shops between which I was 
divided, according to my finances. One was in a court close to 
St. Martin's-church (at the back of the church) which is now 
removed altogether. The pudding at that shop was made with 
currants, and was rather a special pudding, but was dear: two 
penn'orth not being larger than a penn'orth of more ordinary 
pudding. A good shop for the latter was in the Strand, some- 
where near where the Lowther-arcade is now. It was a stout, 
hale pudding, heavy and flabby; with great raisins in it, stuck 
in whole, at great distances apart. It came up hot, at about 
noon every day; and many and many a day did I dine 
off it. 

'We had half-an-hour, I think, for tea. When I had money 
enough, I used to go to a coffee-shop, and have a half-a-pint of 
coffee, and a slice of bread and butter. When I had no money, 
I took a turn in Covent-garden market, and stared at the pine- 
apples. The coffee-shops to which I most resorted were, one in 
Maiden-lane; one in a court (non-existent now) close to Hun- 
gerford-market; and one in St. Martin's-lane, of which I only 
recollect that it stood near the church, and that in the door 
there was an oval glass-plate, with coffee-room painted on it, 
addressed towards the street. If I ever find myself in a very 
different kind of coffee-room now, but where there is such an 
inscription on glass, and read it backward on the wrong side 
MOOR-EEFFOC (as I often used to do then, in a dismal reverie), 
a shock goes through my blood. 

'I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintention- 
ally, the scantiness of my resources and the difficulties of my 
life. I know that if a shiUing or so were given me by any one, 
I spent it in a dinner or a tea. I know that I worked, from 
morning to night, with common men and boys, a shabby child. 
I know that I tried, but ineffectually, not to anticipate my money, 
and to make it last the week through; by putting it away in a 
drawer I had in the counting-house, wrapped into six Httle parcels, 
each parcel containing the same amount, and labelled with a 
different day. I know that I have lounged about the streets, 
insufficientlv and unsatisfactorily fed. I know that, but for the 



I06 CHARLES DICKENS 

mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was 
taken of me, a little robber or a little vagabond. 

'But I held some station at the blacking warehouse too. Be- 
sides that my relative at the counting-house did what a man so 
occupied, and dealing with a thing so anomalous, could, to treat 
me as one upon a different footing from the rest, I never said, 
to man or boy, how it was that I came to be there, or gave the 
least indication of being sorry that I was there. That I suffered 
in secret, and that I suffered exquisitely, no one ever knew but 
I. How much I suffered, it is, as I have said already, utterly 
beyond my power to tell. No man's imagination can overstep 
the reality. But I kept my own counsel, and I did my work. 
I knew from the first, that if I could not do my work as well as 
any of the rest, I could not hold myself above slight and contempt. 
I soon became at least as expeditious and as skilful with my hands, 
as either of the other boys. Though perfectly familiar with them, 
my conduct and manners were different enough from theirs to 
place a space between us. They, and the men, always spoke of 
me as "the young gentleman." A certain man (a soldier once) 
named Thomas, who was the foreman, and another named Harry, 
who was the carman and wore a red jacket, used to call me 
" Charles " sometimes, in speaking to me; but I think it was mostly 
when we were very confidential, and when I had made some efforts 
to entertain them over our work with the results of some of the old 
readings, which were fast perishing out of my mind. Poll Green 
uprose once, and rebelled against the "young gentleman" usage; 
but Bob Fagin settled him speedily. 

'My rescue from this kind of existence I considered quite 
hopeless, and abandoned as such, altogether; though I am 
solemnly convinced that I never, for one hour, was reconciled 
to it, or was otherwise than miserably unhappy. I felt keenly, 
however, the being so cut off from my parents, my brothers, and 
sisters; and, when my day's work was done, going home to such 
a miserable blank; and that, I thought, might be corrected. 
One Sunday night I remonstrated with my father on this head, 
so pathetically and with so many tears, that his kind nature gave 
way. He began to think that it is was not quite right. I do be- 
lieve he had never thought so before, or thought about it. It 



HARD EXPERIENCES IN BOYHOOD 



107 



was the first remonstrance I had ever made about my lot, and 
perhaps it opened up a Kttle more than I intended. A back- 
attic was found for me at the house of an insolvent-court agent, 
who Hved in Lant-street in the borough, where Bob Sawyer 
lodged many years afterwards. A bed and bedding were sent 
over for me, and made up on the floor. The little window had 
a pleasant prospect of a timber-yard; and when I took posses- 
sion of my new abode, I thought it was a Paradise.' 

There is here another blank, which it is however not difficult 
to supply from letters and recollections of my own. What was to 
him of course the great pleasure of his paradise of a lodging, was 
its bringing him again, though after a fashion sorry enough, within 
the circle of home. From this time he used to breakfast ^at 
home,' in other words in the Marshalsea; going to it as early as 
the gates were open, and for the most part much earlier. They 
had no want of bodily comforts there. His father's income, still 
going on, was amply sufficient for that; and in every respect 
indeed but elbow-room, I have heard him say, the family Hved 
more comfortably in prison than they had done for a long time 
out of it. They were waited on still by the maid-of-all-work from 
Bayham-street, the orphan girl of the Chatham workhouse, from 
whose sharp little worldly and also kindly ways he took his first 
impression of the Marchioness in the Old Curiosity Shop. She 
too had a lodging in the neighbourhood that she might be early 
on the scene of her duties; and when Charles met her, as he 
would do occasionally, in his lounging-place by London-bridge, 
he would occupy the time before the gates opened by telling her 
quite astonishing fictions about the wharves and the tower. 'But 
I hope I believed them myself,' he would say. Besides break- 
fast, he had supper also in the prison; and got to his lodging 
generally at nine o'clock. The gates closed always at ten. 

I must not omit what he told me of the landlord of this little 
lodging. He was a fat, good-natured, kind old gentleman. He 
was lame, and had a quiet old wife; and he had a very innocent 
grown-up son, who was lame too. They were ail very kind lo 
the boy. He was taken with one of his old attacks of spasm one 
night, and the whole three of them were about his bed until 
morning. They were all dead when he told me this, but in 



Io8 CHARLES DICKENS 

another form they Hve still very pleasantly as the Garland family 
in the Old Curiosity Shop. 

He had a similar illness one day in the warehouse, which I can 
describe in his own words. 'Bob Fagin was very good to me on 
the occasion of a bad attack of my old disorder. I suffered such 
excruciating pain that time, that they made a temporary bed of 
straw in my old recess in the counting-house, and I rolled about 
on the floor, and Bob filled empty blacking-bottles with hot 
water, and applied relays of them to my side, half the day. I 
got better, and quite easy towards evening; but Bob (who was 
much bigger and older than I) did not like the idea of my going 
home alone, and took me under his protection. I was too proud 
to let him know about the prison; and after making several 
efforts to get rid of him, to all of which Bob Fagin in his good- 
ness was deaf, shook hands with him on the steps of a house 
near Southwark-bridge on the Surrey side, making believe that 
I lived there. As a finishing piece of reality in case of his looking 
back, I knocked at the door, I recollect, and asked, when the 
woman opened it, if that was Mr. Robert Fagin's house.' 

The Saturday nights continued, as before, to be precious to 
him. 'My usual way home was over Blackfriars-bridge, and 
down that turning in the Blackfrairs-road which has Rowland 
Hill's chapel on one side, and the likeness of a golden dog licking 
a golden pot over a shop door on the other. There are a good 
many little low-browed old shops in that street, of a wretched kind; 
and some are unchanged now. I looked into one a few weeks 
ago, where I used to buy boot-laces on Saturday nights, and saw 
the corner where I once sat down on a stool to have a pair of ready- 
made half -boots fitted on. I have been seduced more than once, 
in that street on a Saturday night, by a show-van at a corner; and 
have gone in, with a very motley assemblage, to see the Fat-pig, 
the Wild-indian, and the Little-lady. There were two or three hat- 
manufactories there, then (I think they are there still) ; and among 
the things which, encountered anywhere, or under any circum- 
stances, will instantly recall that time, is the smell of hat-making.' 

His father's attempts to avoid going through the court having 
failed, all needful ceremonies had to be undertaken to obtain the 
benefit of the insolvent debtors' act; and in one of these little 



HARD EXPERIENCES IN BOYHOOD loo 

Charles had his part to play. One condition of the statute was 
that the wearing apparel and personal matters retained were not 
to exceed twenty pounds sterling in value. 'It was necessary, as 
a matter of form, that the clothes I wore should be seen by the 
official appraiser. I had a half-hoHday to enable me to call 
upon him, at his own time, at a house somewhere beyond the 
Obelisk. I recollect his coming out to look at me with his mouth 
full, and a strong smell of beer upon him, and saying good-na- 
turedly that "that would do," and "it was all right." Certainly 
the hardest creditor would not have been disposed (even if he had 
been legally entitled) to avail himself of my poor white hat, little 
jacket, or corduroy trowsers. But I had a fat old silver watch in my 
pocket, which had been given me by my grandmother before the 
blacking days, and I had entertained my doubts as I went along 
whether that valuable possession might not bring me over the 
twenty pounds. So I was greatly relieved, and made him a bow 
of acknowledgment as I went out.' 

Still the want felt most by him was the companionship of boys 
of his own age. He had no such acquaintance. Sometimes, he 
remembered to have played on the coal-barges at dinner time, 
with Poll Green and Bob Fagin ; but those were rare occasions. 
He generally strolled alone, about the back streets of the Adelphi ; 
or explored the Adelphi arches. One of his favourite localities 
was a Httle pubUc-house by the water-side called the Fox-under- 
the-hill, approached by an underground passage which we once 
missed in looking for it together ; ^ and he had a vision which he 
has mentioned in Copperfield of sitting eating something on a 
bench outside, one fine evening, and looking at some coal-heavers 
dancing before the house. 'I wonder what they thought of me,' 
says David. He had himself already said the same in his frag- 
ment of autobiography. 

Another characteristic little incident he made afterwards one 
of David's experiences, but I am able to give it here without the 
disguises that adapt it to the fiction. 'I was such a little fellow, 

1 " Will you permit me to say," a correspondent writes (1871), " that the house, 
shut up and almost ruinous, is still to be found at the bottom of a curious and 
most precipitous court, the entrance of which is just past Salisbury street. It was 
once the approach, I think, to the half-penny boats. The house is now shut out 
from the water-side by the Embankment." 



no CHARLES DICKENS 

with my poor white hat, Httle jacket, and corduroy trowsers, that 
frequently, when I went into the bar of a strange pubKc-house 
for a glass of ale or porter to wash down the saveloy and the 
loaf I had eaten in the street, they didn't like to give it me. I 
remember, one evening (I had been somewhere for my father, 
and was going back to the borough over Westminster-bridge), 
that I went into a pubHc-house in ParHament-street, which is 
still there though altered, at the corner of the short street leading 
into Cannon-row, and said to the landlord behind the bar, ''What 
is your very best — the very best — ale, a glass ? " For, the 
occasion was a festive one, for some reason: I forget why. It 
may have been my birthday, or somebody else's. " Twopence," 
says he. "Then," says I, "just draw me a glass of that, if 
you please, with a good head to it." The landlord looked at me 
in return, over the bar, from head to foot, with a strange smile 
on his face; and instead of drawing the beer, looked round the 
screen and said something to his wife, who came out from behind it, 
with her work in her hand, and joined him in surveying me. 
Here we stand, all three, before me now, in my study in Devonshire- 
terrace. The landlord, in his shirt sleeves, leaning against the 
bar window-frame; his wife, looking over the little half -door; 
and I, in some confusion, looking up at them from outside the 
partition. They asked me a good many questions, as what my 
name was, how old I was, where I lived, how I was employed, etc, 
etc. To all of which, that I might commit nobody, I invented 
appropriate answers. They served me with the ale, though I sus- 
pect it was not the strongest on the premises ; and the landlord's 
wife, opening the little half -door and bending down, gave me a kiss 
that was half-admiring and half-compassionate, but all womanly 
and good, I am sure.' 

A later, and not less characteristic, occurrence of the true story 
of this time found also a place, three or four years after it was 
written, in his now famous fiction. It preceded but by a short 
term the discharge, from the Marshalsea, of the elder Dickens ; 
to whom a rather considerable legacy from a relative had accrued 
not long before ('some hundreds' I understood), and had been 
paid into court during his imprisonment. The scene to be 
described arose on the occasion of a petition drawn up by him 



HARD EXPERIENCES IN BOYHOOD m 

before he left, praying, not for the abolition of imprisonment for 
debt as David Copperfield relates, but for the less dignified but 
more accessible boon of a bounty to the prisoners to drink his 
majesty's health on his majesty's forthcoming birthday. 

'I mention the circumstance because it illustrates, to me, my 
early interest in observing people. When I went to the Marshal- 
sea of a night, I was always deUghted to hear from my mother 
what she knew about the histories of the different debtors in the 
prison; and when I heard of this approaching ceremony, I was 
so anxious to see them all come in, one after another (though 
I knew the greater part of them already, to speak to, and they 
me), that I got leave of absence on purpose, and estabhshed 
myself in a corner, near the petition. It was stretched out, 
I recollect, on a great ironing-board, under the window, which 
in another part of the room made a bedstead at night. The 
internal regulations of the place, for cleanliness and order, and 
for the government of a common room in the ale-house; where 
hot water and some means of cooking, and a good fire, were 
provided for all who paid a very small subscription; were ex- 
cellently administered by a governing committee of debtors, of 
which my father was chairman for the time being. As many of 
the principal officers of this body as could be got into the small 
room without filling it up, supported him, in front of the petition ; 
and my old friend Captain Porter (who had washed himself, to 
do honour to so solemn an occasion) stationed himself close to 
it, to read it to all who were unacquainted with its contents. 
The door was then thrown open, and they began to come in, in 
a long file; several waiting on the landing outside, while one 
entered, affixed his signature, and went out. To everybody in 
succession. Captain Porter said, *' Would you like to hear it 
read?" If he weakly showed the least disposition to hear it. 
Captain Porter, in a loud sonorous voice, gave him every word 
of it. I remember a certain luscious roll he gave to such words 
as "Majesty — gracious Majesty — your gracious Majesty's un- 
fortunate subjects — your Majesty's well-known munificence " — 
as if the words were something real in his mouth, and delicious 
to taste : my poor father meanwhile listening with a little of an 
author's vanity, and contemplating (not severely) the spikes on 



112 CHARLES DICKENS 

the opposite wall. Whatever was comical in this scene, and 
whatever was pathetic, I sincerely beheve I perceived in my 
corner, whether I demonstrated or not, quite as well as I should 
perceive it now. I made out my own little character and story 
for every man who put his name to the sheet of paper. I might 
be able to do that now, more truly : not more earnestly, or with 
a closer interest. Their different peculiarities of dress, of face, 
of gait, of manner, were written indelibly upon my memory. I 
would rather have seen it than the best play ever played; and 
I often thought about it afterwards, over the pots of paste-black- 
ing, often and often. When I looked, with my mind's eye, into 
the Fleet-prison during Mr. Pickwick's incarceration, I wonder 
whether half-a-dozen men were wanting from the Marshalsea 
crowd that came filing in again, to the sound of Captain Porter's 
voice ! ' 

When the family left the Marshalsea they all went to lodge 
with the lady in Little-college-street, a Mrs. Roylance, who has 
obtained unexpected immortahty as Mrs. Pipchin; and they 
afterwards occupied a small house in Somers-town. But, before 
this time, Charles was present with some of them in Tenterden- 
street to see his sister Fanny receive one of the prizes given to the 
pupils of the royal academy of music. 'I could not bear to 
think of myself — beyond the reach of all such honourable 
emulation and success. The tears ran down my face. I felt 
as if my heart were rent. I prayed, when I went to bed that 
night, to be Hfted out of the humihation and neglect in which 
I was. I never had suffered so much before. There was no 
envy in this.' There was little need that he should say so. 
Extreme enjoyment in witnessing the exercise of her talents, the 
utmost pride in every success obtained by them, he manifested 
always to a degree otherwise quite unusual with him ; and on the 
day of her funeral, which we passed together, I had most affecting 
proof of his tender and grateful memory of her in these childish 
days. A few more sentences, certainly not less touching than 
any that have gone before, will bring the story of them to its 
close. They stand here exactly as written by him. 

'I am not sure that it was before this time, or after it, that 
the blacking warehouse was removed to Chandos-street, Covent- 



HARD EXPERIENCES IN BOYHOOD 113 

garden. It is no matter. Next to the shop at the corner of 
Bedford-street in Chandos-street, are two rather old-fashioned 
houses and shops adjoining one another. They were one then, 
or thrown into one, for the blacking business; and had been a 
butter shop. Opposite to them was, and is, a public-house, 
where I got my ale, under these new circumstances. The stones 
in the street may be smoothed by my small feet going across to 
it at dinner-time, and back again. The estabhshment was larger 
now, and we had one or two new boys. Bob Fagin and I had 
attained to great dexterity in tying up the pots. I forget how 
many we could do, in five minutes. We worked, for the light's 
sake, near the second window as you come from Bedford-street; 
and we were so brisk at it, that the people used to stop and look 
in. Sometimes there would be quite a little crowd there. I saw 
my father coming in at the door one day when we were very busy, 
and I wondered how he could bear it. 

'Now, I generally had my dinner in the warehouse. Some- 
times I brought it from home, so I was better off. I see myself 
coming across Russell-square from Somers-town, one morning, with 
some cold hotch-potch in a small basin tied up in a handkerchief. 
I had the same wanderings about the streets as I used to have, 
and was just as solitary and self-dependent as before ; but I had 
not the same diflSculty in merely living. I never however heard 
a word of being taken away, or of being otherwise than quite 
provided for. 

'At last, one day, my father, and the relative so often mentioned, 
quarrelled; quarrelled by letter, for I took the letter from my 
father to him which caused the explosion, but quarrelled very 
fiercely. It was about me. It may have had some backward 
reference, in part, for anything I know, to my employment at the 
window. All I am certain of is, that, soon after I had given 
him the letter, my cousin (he was a sort of cousin, by marriage) 
told me he was very much insulted about me; and that it was 
impossible to keep me, after that. I cried very much, partly 
because it was so sudden, and partly because in his anger he was 
violent about my father, though gentle to me. Thomas, the old 
soldier, comforted me, and said he was sure it was for the best. 
With a rehef so strange that it was like oppression, I went home. 



114 CHARLES DICKENS 

' My mother set herself to accommodate the quarrel, and did so 
next day. She brought home a request for me to return next 
morning, and a high character of me, which I am very sure I 
deserved. My father said I should go back no more, and should 
go to school. I do not write resentfully or angrily: for I know 
how all these things have worked together to make me what I 
am: but I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never 
can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent back. 

'From that hour until this at which I write, no word of that 
part of my childhood which I have now gladly brought to a 
close, has passed my Hps to any human being. I have no idea 
how long it lasted; whether for a year, or much more, or less. 
From that hour, until this, my father and my mother have been 
stricken dumb upon it. I have never heard the least allusion to 
it, however far off and remote, from either of them. I have never, 
until I now impart it to this paper, in any burst of confidence 
with any one, my own wife not excepted, raised the curtain I 
then dropped, thank God. 

'Until old Hungerford-market was pulled down, until old 
Hungerford-stairs were destroyed, and the very nature of the 
ground changed, I never had the courage to go back to the place 
where my servitude began. I never saw it. I could not endure 
to go near it. For many years, when I came near to Robert 
Warren's in the Strand, I crossed over to the opposite side of the 
way, to avoid a certain smell of the cement they put upon the 
blacking-corks, which reminded me of what I was once. It was 
a very long time before I liked to go up Chandos-street. My 
old way home by the borough made me cry, after my eldest 
child could speak. 

'In my walks at night I have walked there often, since then, 
and by degrees I have come to write this. It does not seem a 
tithe of what I might have written, or of what I meant to write.' 



THE CAMPO SANTO nq 



JOHN RUSKIN 

THE CAMPO SANTO 

[From '' Praterita,'" Outlines of Scenes and Thoughts, Perhaps Worthy of 
Memory, in My Past Life, Vol. II., Chap. VI, 1885-1889. Library Edition, 
George Allen, London, 1903. 

RusKiN, John (1819-1900), author, artist, and social reformer; son of 
John James Ruskin (1785-1864), who entered partnership as wine mer- 
chant in London, 1809; brought up on strict puritanical principles; edu- 
cated by Dr. Andrews, father of Coventry Patmore's first wife, and under 
the Rev. Thomas Dale (1797-1870) at Camberwell; studied at King's 
College, London; learned drawing under Copley Fielding and J. D. Hard- 
ing; entered Christ Church, Oxford, 1836; won Newdigate prize, 1839; 
contributed verse to 'Friendship's Offering' and other miscellanies; travelled 
for his health, 1 840-1 ; B. A., 1842; M. A., 1843; his first published writings 
were articles in London's 'Magazine of Natural History,' 1834; made ac- 
quaintance of Turner, 1840; paid first visit to Venice, 1841; published, 
1843, first volume of 'Modern Painters, by a Graduate of Oxford' (his name 
first appeared on title-page in edition of 1851); second volume published 
1846, the authorship being by that time an open secret; the third and 
fourth volumes appeared 1856, the fifth, i860; married, 1848, Euphemia 
Chalmers Gray, daughter of George Gray, a lawyer of Perth; made acquaint- 
ance of Millais, 1851; dehvered at Edinburgh, 1853, lectures on 'Architec- 
ture and Painting,' published, 1854; his marriage annulled on his wife's 
suit, which he did not defend, 1855; published, 1849, 'Seven Lamps of 
Architecture,' which had considerable influence in encouraging the Gothic 
revival of the time, and 'Stones of Venice,' 3 vols. 1851-3; warmly defended 
the pre-Raphaelites in letters to 'The Times,' and in pamphlets, 1851; pub- 
lished annually, 1855-9, 'Notes on the Royal Academy'; arranged Turner 
drawings at National Gallery; took charge of drawing classes at Working 
Men's College, Great Ormond Street, London, 1854-8; published 'Ele- 
ments of Drawing,' 1856, and 'Elements of Perspective,' 1859; honorary 
student of Christ Church, Oxford, 1858; devoted himself to economic studies, 
and published 'Unto this Last' (some of the papers being first contributed 
to 'Cornhill Magazine'), i860, 'Munera Pulveris' (contributed in part to 
'Eraser's Magazine'), 1862, 'Gold,' 1863, 'Time and Tide,' 1867, and 
various letters and pamphlets, 1868, advocating a system of national educa- 
tion, the organisation of labour, and other social measures; honorary LL.D., 
Cambridge, 1867; between 1855 and 1870 he delivered in all parts of the 
country lectures, some of which were published in 'Sesame and Lilies,' 
1865, 'The Crown of Wild Olive,' 1866, and 'The Ethics of the Dust,' 
1866; removed, 1871, to Brantwood, Coniston Lake, where he remained 
till death; established 'Fors Clavigera,' a monthly letter 'to the workmen 
and labourers of Great Britain,' and founded, 187 1, the guild of St. George 
on principles that 'food can only be got out of the ground and happiness 
out of honesty,' and that 'the highest wisdom and the highest treasure need 
not be costly or exclusive'; engaged in several industrial experiments, in- 
cluding the revival of the hand-made linen industry in Langdale, and the 



Tl6 JOHN RUSKIN 

establishment of a cloth industry at Laxey, Isle of Man; inspired and was 
first president of 'The Art for Schools Association'; first Slade professor 
of art at Oxford, 1870-9; again filled the post, 1883-4, and published eight 
volumes of lectures; founded a drawing school at Oxford and endowed a 
drawing-master; honorary fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 1871 ; 
suffered at times from brain fever after 1878; published at intervals during 
1885-9 'Praeterita,' an autobiography which was never completed; died 
from influenza, 20 Jan. 1900, and was buried at Coniston. A bibliography 
of his writings by Thomas J. Wise and James P. Smart was issued, 1893. 
Many of the illustrations to his works were executed from his own draw- 
ings. He inherited from his father a large fortune, all of which was dis- 
persed, chiefly in charitable and philanthropic objects, before his death. 

— Index and Epitome of D. N. B. 

**The spirit and style of the book are thoroughly delightful, and truly 
represent the finer characteristics of his nature. He has written nothing 
better, it seems to me, than some pages of this book, whether of descrip- 
tion or reflection. The retrospect is seen through the mellowing atmosphere 
of age, the harshness of many an outline is softened by distance, and the old 
man looks back upon his own life with a feeling which permits him to de- 
lineate it with perfect candor, with exquisite tenderness, and a playful live- 
liness quickened by his humorous sense of its dramatic extravagances 
and individual eccentricities." — Charles Eliot Norton, Letters of John 
Ruskin to Charles Eliot Norton, Vol. II, p. 221. Houghton, MifiQin & Co., 
Boston.] 

The summer's work of 1844, so far from advancing the de- 
sign of "Modern Painters," had thrown me off it — first into 
fine botany, then into difficult geology, and lastly, as that entry 
about the Madonna shows, into a fit of figure study which meant 
much. It meant, especially, at last some looking into ecclesiastical 
history, — some notion of the merit of fourteenth century painting, 
and the total abandonment of Rubens and Rembrandt for the 
Venetian school. Which, the reader will please observe, signified 
not merely the advance in sense of color, but in perception of truth 
and modesty in light and shade. And on getting home, I felt that 
in the cyclone of confused new knowledge, this was the thing first 
to be got firm. 

Scarcely any book writing was done that winter, — and there 
are no diaries; but, for the first time, I took up Turner's "Liber 
Studiorum" instead of engravings; mastered its principles, prac- 
tised its method, and by spring-time in 1845 was able to study 
from nature accurately in full chiaroscuro, with a good frank 
power over the sepia tinting. 

I must have read also, that winter, Rio's "Poesie Chretienne," 



THE CAMPO SANTO 



117 



and Lord Lindsay's introduction to his "Christian Art." And 
perceiving thus, in some degree, what a blind bat and puppy I had 
been, all through Italy, determined that at least I must see Pisa 
and Florence again before writing another word of ''Modern 
Painters." 

How papa and mamma took this new vagary, I have no rec- 
ollection; resignedly, at least: perhaps they also had some 
notion that I might think differently, and it was to be hoped in 
a more orthodox and becoming manner, after another sight of the 
Tribune. At all events, they concluded to give me my own way 
entirely this time ; and what time I chose. My health caused them 
no farther anxiety ; they could trust my word to take care of myself 
every day, just the same as if I were coming home to tea: my 
mother was satisfied of Couttet's skill as a physician, and care, if 
needed, as a nurse ; — he was engaged for the summer in those 
capacities, — and, about the first week in April, I found myself 
dining on a trout of the Ain, at Champagnole ; with Switzerland 
and Italy at my feet — for to-morrow. . . . 

By Gap and Sisteron to Frejus, along the Riviera to Sestri, 
where I gave a day to draw the stone-pipes now at Oxford; 
and so straight to my first fixed aim, Lucca, where I settled 
myself for ten days, — as I supposed. It turned out forty years. 

The town is some thousand paces square; the unbroken 
rampart walk round may be a short three miles. There are 
upward of twenty churches in that space, dating between the sixth 
and twelfth centuries; a ruined feudal palace and tower, un- 
matched except at Verona : the streets clean — cheerfully in- 
habited, yet quiet; nor desolate, even now. Two of the churches 
representing the perfectest phase of round-arched building in 
Europe, and one of them containing the loveliest Christian tomb 
in Italy. 

The rampart walk, unbroken except by descents and ascents 
at the gates, commands every way the loveliest ranges of all 
the Tuscan Apennine: when I was there in 1845, besides the 
ruined feudal palace, there was a maintained Ducal Palace, 
with a living Duke in it, whose military band played every evening 
on the most floral and peaceful space of rampart. After a well- 
spent day, and a three-course dinner, — military band, — chains, 



Il8 JOHN RUSKIN 

double braided, of amethyst Apennine linked by golden clouds, — ■ 
then the mountain air of April, still soft as the marble towers, grew 
unsubstantial in the starlight, — such the monastic discipline of 
Lucca to my novitiate mind. 

I must stop to think a little how it was that so early as this 
I could fasten on the tomb of Ilaria di Caretto with certainty 
of its being a supreme guide to me ever after. If I get tiresome, 
the reader must skip; I write, for the moment, to amuse myself, 
and not him. The said reader, duly sagacious, must have felt, 
long since, that, though very respectable people in our way, we 
were all of us definitely vulgar people; just as my aunt's dog 
Towser was a vulgar dog, though a very good and dear dog. 
Said reader should have seen also that we had not set ourselves 
up to have ''a taste" in anything. There was never any 
question about matching colors in furniture, or having the correct 
pattern in china. Everything for service in the house was bought 
plain, and of the best; our toys were what we happened to take a 
fancy to in pleasant places — a cow in stalactite from Matlock, 
fisher-wife doll from Calais, a Swiss farm from Berne, Bacchus and 
Ariadne from Carrara. But, among these toys, principal on the 
drawing-room chimney-piece, always put away by my mother 
at night, and "put out" in the afternoon, were some pieces of 
Spanish clay, to which, without knowing it, I owed a quantity 
of strenuous teaching. Native baked clay figures, painted and 
gilded by untaught persons who had the gift ; manufacture mainly 
practised along the Xeres coast, I believe, and of late much decayed, 
but then flourishing, and its work as good as the worker could 
make it. There was a Don Whiskerandos contrabandista, 
splendidly handsome and good-natured, on a magnificent horse 
at the trot, brightly caparisoned : everything finely finished, his gun 
loose in his hand. There was a lemonade seller, a pomegranate 
seller, a matador with his bull — animate all, and graceful, the 
coloring chiefly ruddy brown. Things of constant interest to me, 
and altogether wholesome ; vestiges of living sculpture come down 
into the Heme Hill times, from the days of Tanagra. 

For loftier admiration, as before told, Chantrey in Lichfield, 
Roubilliac in Westminster, were set forth to me, and honestly 
felt; a scratched white outline or two from Greek vases on the 



THE CAMPO SANTO Hq 

black Derbyshire marble did not interfere with my first general 
feeling about sculpture, that it should be living, and emotional; 
that the flesh should be like flesh, and the drapery like clothes; 
and that, whether trotting contrabandista, dancing girl, or dying 
gladiator, the subject should have an interest of its own, and not 
consist merely of figures with torches or garlands standing alter- 
nately on their right and left legs. Of ''ideal " form and the like, 
I fortunately heard and thought nothing. 

The point of connoisseurship I had reached, at sixteen, with 
these advantages and instincts, is curiously measured by the 
criticism of the Cathedral of Rheims in my Don Juan journal of 
1835: 

The carving is not rich, — the Gothic heavy, 

The statues miserable; not a fold 
Of drapery well-disposed in all the bevy 

Of Saints and Bishops and Archbishops old 
That line the porches gray. But in the nave I 

Stared at the windows purple, blue, and gold: 
And the perspective's wonderfully fine 

When you look down the long columnar line. 



By the ''carving" I meant the niche work, which is indeed 
curiously rude at Rheims; by the "Gothic" the structure and 
mouldings of arch, which I rightly call "heavy" as compared 
with later French types ; while the condemnation of the draperies 
meant that they were not the least like those either of Rubens or 
Roubilliac. And ten years had to pass over me before I knew 
better; but every day between the standing in Rheims porch and 
by Ilaria's tomb had done on me some chiselling to the good ; and 
the discipline from the Fontainebleau time till now had been 
severe. The accurate study of tree branches, growing leaves, 
and foreground herbage, had more and more taught me the differ- 
ence between violent and graceful fines; the beauty of Clotilde 
and Cecile, essentially French-Gothic, and the living Egeria of 
AraceH, had fixed in my mind and heart, not as an art-ideal, but as 
a sacred reality, the purest standards of breathing womanhood; 
and here suddenly, in the sleeping Ilaria, was the perfectness of 
these, expressed with harmonies of line which I saw in an instant 
were under the same laws as the river wave, and the aspen branch, 



I20 JOHN RUSKIN 

and the stars' rising and setting ; but treated with a modesty and 
severity which read the laws of nature by the Hght of virtue. 

Another influence, no less forcible, and more instantly effective, 
was brought to bear on me by my first quiet walk through. Lucca. 

Hitherto, all architecture, except fairy-finished Milan, had 
depended with me for its deHght on being partly in decay. I 
revered the sentiment of its age, and I was accustomed to look for 
the signs of age in the mouldering of its traceries, and in the inter- 
stices deepening between the stones of its masonry. This looking 
for cranny and joint was mixed with the love of rough stones them- 
selves, and of country churches built like Westmoreland cottages. 

Here in Lucca I found myself suddenly in the presence of 
twelfth century buildings, originally set in such balance of masonry, 
that they could all stand without mortar; and in material so incor- 
ruptible, that after six hundred years of sunshine and rain, a lancet 
could not now be put between their joints. 

Absolutely for the first time I now saw what mediaeval builders 
were, and what they meant. I took the simplest of all facades for 
analysis, that of Santa Maria Foris-Portam, and thereon literally 
began the study of architecture. 

In the third — and, for the reader's relief, last — place in these 
technical records, Fra Bartolomeo's picture of the ''Magdalene, 
with St. Catherine of Siena," gave me a faultless example of the 
treatment of pure Catholic tradition by the perfect schools of 
painting. 

And I never needed lessoning more in the principles of the 
three great arts. After those summer days of 1845, I advanced 
only in knowledge of individual character, provincial feeling, 
and details of construction or execution. Of what was primarily 
right and ultimately best, there was never more doubt to me, and 
my art-teaching, necessarily, in its many local or personal interests 
partial, has been from that time throughout consistent, and pro- 
gressing every year to more evident completion. 

The full happiness of that time to me cannot be explained ex- 
cept to consistently hard workers; and of those, to the few who 
can keep their peace and health. For the world appeared to me 
now exactly right. Hills as high as they should be, rivers as wide, 
pictures as pretty, and masters and men as wise -^ as pretty and 



THE CAMPO SANTO I2i 

wise could be. And I expected to bring everybody to be of my 
opinion, as soon as I could get out my second volume ; and drove 
down to Pisa in much hope and pride, though grave in both. 

For now I had read enough of Gary's "Dante," and Sismondi's 
''Italian Republics," and Lord Lindsay, to feel what I had to look 
for in the Campo Santo. Yet at this moment I pause to think what 
it was that I found. 

Briefly, the entire doctrine of Christianity, painted so that 
a child could understand it. And what a child cannot under- 
stand of Christianity, no one need try to. 

In these days of the religion of this and that, — briefly let 
us say, the rehgion of Stocks and Posts — in order to say a clear 
word of Campo Santo, one must first say a firm word concerning 
Christianity itself. I find numbers, even of the most inteUigent 
and amiable people, not knowing what the word means; because 
they are always asking how much is true, and how much they like, 
and never ask, first, what was the total meaning of it, whether they 
like it or not. 

The total meaning was, and is, that the God who made earth 
and its creatures, took at a certain time upon the earth, the flesh 
and form of man; in that flesh sustained the pain and died the 
death of the creature He had made ; rose again after death into 
glorious human life, and when the date of the human race is ended, 
will return in visible form, and render to every man according to 
his work. Christianity is the behef in, and love of, God thus 
manifested. Anything less than this, the mere acceptance of the 
sayings of Christ, or asserting of any less than divine power in His 
Being, may be, for aught I know, enough for virtue, peace, and 
safety; but they do not make people Christians, or enable them to 
understand the heart of the simplest believer in the old doctrine. 
One verse more of George Herbert will put the height of that 
doctrine into less debatable, though figurative, picture than any 
longer talk of mine : — 

Hast thou not heard that my Lord Jesus died? 

Then let me tell thee a strange story. 
The God of Power, as he did ride 
In his majestic robes of glory, 

Resolved to light; and so, one day 
He did descend, undressing all the way. 



122 JOHN RUSKIN 

The stars his tire of light, and rings, obtained, 

The cloud his bow, the fire his spear. 
The heavens his azure mantle gained. 

And when they asked what he would wear, 
He smiled, and said as he did go, 
"He had new clothes a-making, here, below." 

I write from memory; the lines have been my lesson, ever since 
1845, of the noblesse of thought which makes the simplest word 
best. 

And the Campo Santo of Pisa is absolutely the same in painting 
as these lines in word. Straight to its purpose, in the clearest and 
most eager way ; the purpose, highest that can be ; the expression, 
the best possible to the workman according to his knowledge. The 
several parts of the gospel of the Campo Santo are written by 
different persons ; but all the original frescoes are by men of honest 
genius. No matter for their names; the contents of this wall- 
scripture are these. 

First, the Triumph of Death, as Homer, Virgil, and Horace 
thought of death. Having been within sight of it myself, since 
Oxford days ; and looking back already over a little Campo Santo 
of my own people, I was ready for that part of the lesson. 

Secondly, the story of the Patriarchs, and of their guidance 
by the ministries of visible angels; that is to say, the ideal of 
the life of man in its blessedness, before the coming of Christ. 

Thirdly, the story of Job, in direct converse with God him- 
self, the God of nature, and without any reference to the work of 
Christ except in its final surety, "Yet in my flesh I shall see 
God." 

Fourthly, the life of St. Ranier of Pisa, and of the desert saints, 
showing the ideal of human Hfe in its blessedness after the coming 
of Christ. 

Lastly, the return of Christ in glory, and the Last Judgment. 

Now this code of teaching is absolutely general for the whole 
Christian world. There is no papal doctrine, nor antipapal; 
nor any question of sect or schism whatsoever. Kings, bishops, 
knights, hermits, are there, because the painters saw them, and 
painted them, naturally, as we paint the nineteenth century prod- 
uct of common councilmen and engineers. But they did not 
conceive that a man must be entirely happy in this world and the 



THE CAMPO SANTO 



123 



next because he wore a mitre or helmet, as we do because he has 
made a fortune or a tunnel. 

Not only was I prepared at this time for the teaching of 
the Campo Santo, but it was precisely what at that time I 
needed. 

It realized for me the patriarchal life, showed me what the 
earlier Bible meant to say; and put into direct and inevitable 
light the questions I had to deal with, alike in my thoughts and 
ways, under existing Christian tradition. 

Questions clearly not to be all settled in that fortnight. Some, 
respecting the Last Judgment, such as would have occurred to 
Professor Huxley, — as for instance, that if Christ came to judg- 
ment in St. James's Street, the people couldn't see him from Pic- 
cadilly, — had been dealt with by me before now; but there is one 
fact, and no question at all, concerning the Judgment, w^hich was 
only at this time beginning to dawn on me, that men had been curi- 
ously judging themselves by always calling the day they expected, 
"Dies Irae," instead of "Dies Amoris." 

Meantime, my own first business was evidently to read what 
these Pisans had said of it, and take some record of the sayings; 
for at that time the old-fashioned ravages were going on, honestly 
and innocently. Nobody cared for the old plaster, and nobody 
pretended to. When any dignitary of Pisa was to be buried, they 
peeled off some Benozzo Gozzoli, or whatever else was in the way, 
and put up a nice new tablet to the new defunct; but what was 
left was still all Benozzo, (or repainting of old time, not last year's 
restoration). I cajoled the Aljbe Rosini into letting me put up a 
scaffold level with the frescoes; set steadily to work with what 
faculty in outline I had; and being by this time practised in 
delicate curves, by having drawn trees and grass rightly, got far 
better results than I had hoped, and had an extremely happy fort- 
night of it ! For as the Triumph of Death was no new thought 
to me, the Hfe of hermits was no temptation; but the stories of 
Abraham, Job, and St. Ranier, well told, were like three new — 
Scott's novels, I was going to say, and will say, for I don't see my 
way to anything nearer the fact, and the work on them was pure 
delight. I got an outline of Abraham's parting with the last of the 
three angels ; of the sacrifice of Job ; of the three beggars, and a 



124 JOHN RUSKIN 

fiend or two, out of the Triumph of Death ; and of the conversion 
of St. Ranier, for which I greatly pitied him. 

For he is playing, evidently with happiest skill, on a kind 
of zithern-harp, held upright as he stands, to the dance of four 
sweet Pisan maids, in a round, holding each other only by the bent 
little fingers of each hand. And one with graver face, and wearing 
a purple robe, approaches him, saying — I knew once what she 
said, but forget now; only it meant that his joyful life in that kind 
was to be ended. And he obeys her, and follows, into a nobler 
life. 

I do not know if ever there was a real St. Ranier; but the 
story of him remained for truth in the heart of Pisa as long as 
Pisa herself lived. 

I got more than outline of this scene: a colored sketch of the 
whole group, which I destroyed afterward, in shame of its faults, 
all but the purple-robed warning figure; and that is lost, and the 
fresco itself now lost also, all mouldering and ruined by what 
must indeed be a cyclical change in the Italian climate : the frescoes 
exposed to it of which I made note before 1850, seem to me to have 
suffered more in the twenty years since, than they had since they 
were painted: those at Verona alone excepted, where the art of 
fresco seems to have been practised in the fifteenth century in 
absolute perfection, and the color to have been injured only by 
violence, not by time. 

There was another lovely cloister in Pisa, without fresco, 
but exquisite in its arched perspective and central garden, and 
noble in its unbuttressed height o.f belfry tower ; — the cloister 
of San Francesco : in these, and in the meadow round the baptistery, 
the routine of my Italian university life was now fixed for a good 
many years in main material points. 

In summer I have always been at work, or out walking, by 
six o'clock, usually awake by half -past four; but I keep to Pisa 
for the present, where my monkish discipline arranged itself thus. 
Out, any how, by six, quick walk to the field, and as much done as 
I could, and back to breakfast at half-past eight. Study bit of 
Sismondi over bread and butter, then back to Campo Santo, 
draw till twelve; quick walk to look about me and stretch my 
legs, in shade if it might be, before lunch, on anything I chanced 



THE CAMPO SANTO 



125 



to see nice in a fruit shop, and a bit of bread. Back to lighter 
work, or merely looking and thinking, for another hour and a half, 
and to hotel for dinner at four. Three courses and a flask of 
Aleatico (a sweet, yet rather astringent, red, rich for Italian, wine 
— provincial, and with lovely basketwork round the bottle). 
Then out for saunter with Couttet; he having leave to say any- 
thing he had a mind to, but not generally communicative of his 
feelings; he carried my sketch-book, but in the evening there was 
too much always to be hunted out, of city; or watched, of hills, or 
sunset ; and I rarely drew, — to my sorrow, now. I wish I knew 
less, and had drawn more. 

Homewards, from wherever we had got to, the moment the 
sun was down, and the last clouds had lost their color. I avoided 
marshy places, if I could, at all times of the day, because I didn't 
like them; but I feared neither sun nor moon, dawn nor twilight, 
malaria, nor anything else malefic, in the course of work, except only 
draughts and ugly people. I never would sit in a draught for half 
a minute, and fied from some sorts of beggars ; but a crowd of the 
common people round me only made me proud, and try to draw as 
well as I could ; mere rags or dirt I did not care an atom for. 

As early as 1835, and as late as 1841, I had been accustomed, 
both in France and Italy, to feel that the crowd behind me was 
interested in my choice of subjects, and pleasantly applausive 
of the swift progress under my hand of street perspectives, and 
richness of surface decoration, such as might be symbolized by dex- 
trous zigzags, emphatic dots, or graceful flourishes. I had the 
better pleasure, now, of feeling that my really watchful delineation, 
while still rapid enough to interest any stray student of drawing who 
might stop by me on his way to the Academy, had a quite unusual 
power of directing the attention of the general crowd to points of 
beauty, or subjects of sculpture, in the buildings I was at work on, to 
which they had never before lifted eyes, and which I had the double 
pride of first discovering for them, and then imitating — not to their 
dissatisfaction. 

And well might I be proud; but how much more ought I to 
have been pitiful, in feeling the swift and perfect sympathy which 
the '' common people" — companion-people I should have said, for 
in Italy there is no commonness — gave me, in Lucca, or Florence, or 



126 JOHN RUSKIN 

Venice, for every touch of true work that I laid in their sight.^ How 
much more, I say, should it have been pitiful to me, to recognize 
their eager intellect, and delicate senses, open to every lesson and 
every joy of their ancestral art, far more deeply and vividly than in 
the days when every spring kindled them into battle, and every 
autumn was red with their blood: yet left now, alike by the 
laws and lords set over them, less happy in aimless hfe than of 
old in sudden death; never one effort made to teach them, to com- 
fort them, to economize their industries, animate their pleasures, 
or guard their simplest rights from the continually more fatal op- 
pression of unprincipled avarice, and unmerciful wealth. 

But all this I have felt and learned, like so much else, too late. 
The extreme seclusion of my early training left me long careless of 
sympathy for myself ; and that which I gave to others never led me 
into any hope of being useful to them, till my strength of active 
life was past. Also, my mind was not yet catholic enough to feel 
that the Campo Santo belonged to its own people more than to me; 
and indeed, I had to read its lessons before I could interpret them. 
The world has for the most part been of opinion that I entered on 
the task of philanthropy too soon rather than too late : at all events, 
my conscience remained at rest during all those first times at Pisa, 
in mere delight in the glory of the past, and in hope for the future of 
Italy, without need of my becoming one of her demagogues. And 
the days that began in the cloister of the Campo Santo usually 
ended by my getting upon the roof of Santa Maria della Spina, and 
sitting in the sunlight that transfused the warm marble of its 
pinnacles, till the unabated brightness went down beyond the arches 
of the Ponte-a-Mare, — the few footsteps and voices of the twilight 
fell silent in the streets, and the city and her mountains stood mute 
as a dream, beyond the soft eddying of Arno. 

^ A letter, received from Miss Alexander as I correct this proof, gives a singu- 
lar instance of this power in the Italian peasant. She says: — "I have just been 
drawing a magnificent Lombard shepherd, who sits to me in a waistcoat made 
from the skin of a yellow cow with the hairy side out, a shirt of homespun linen 
as coarse as sailcloth, a scarlet sash, and trousers woven (I should think) from the 
wool of the black sheep. He astonishes me all the time by the great amount of 
good advice which he gives me about my work ; and always right ! Whenever 
he looks at my unfinished picture, he can always tell me exactly what it wants." 



LEARNING TO WRITE 1 27 

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

LEARNING TO WRITE 

[From "A College Magazine," in Memories and Portraits, 1887, 
Thistle Edition, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. For the Life of 
Stevenson, see post, p. 623.] 

All through my boyhood and youth, I was known and pointed out 
for the pattern of an idler ; and yet I was always busy on my own 
private end, which was to learn to write. I kept always two books 
in my pocket, one to read, one to write in. As I walked, my mind 
was busy fitting what I saw with appropriate words; when I sat by 
the roadside, I would either read, or a pencil and a penny version- 
book would be in my hand, to note down the features of the scene or 
commemorate some halting stanzas. Thus I lived with words. 
And what I thus wrote was for no ulterior use, it was written con- 
sciously for practice. It was not so much that I wished to be an 
author (though I wished that too) as that I had vowed that I would 
learn to write. That was a proficiency that tempted me; and I 
practised to acquire it, as men learn to whittle, in a wager with 
myself. Description was the principal field of my exercise ; for to 
any one with senses there is always something worth describing, 
and town and country are but one continuous subject. But I 
worked in other ways also; often accompanied my walks with 
dramatic dialogues, in which I played many parts; and often 
exercised myself in writing down conversations from memory. 

This was all excellent, no doubt ; so were the diaries I sometimes 
tried to keep, but always and very speedily discarded, finding them 
a school of posturing and melancholy self-deception. And yet this 
was not the most efficient part of my training. Good though it 
was, it only taught me (so far as I have learned them at all) the 
lower and less intellectual elements of the art, the choice of the 
essential note and the right word: things that to a happier con- 
stitution had perhaps come by nature. And regarded as training, 
it had one grave defect; for it set me no standard of achievement. 
So that there was perhaps more profit, as there was certainly more 
effort, in my secret labours at home. Whenever I read a book or a 



128 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

passage that particularly pleased me, in which a thing was said or 
an effect rendered with propriety, in which there was either some 
conspicuous force or some happy distinction in the style, I must sit 
down at once and set myself to ape that quality. I was unsuccess- 
ful, and I knew it ; and tried again, and was again unsuccessful 
and always unsuccessful; but at least in these vain bouts, I got 
some practice in rhythm, in harmony, in construction and co- 
ordination of parts. I have thus played the sedulous ape to 
Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to 
Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire and to Ober- 
mann. I remember one of these monkey tricks, which was called 
The Vanity of Morals: it was to have had a second part, The 
Vanity of Knowledge; and as I had neither morality nor scholar- 
ship, the names were apt ; but the second part was never attempted, 
and the first part was written (which is my reason for recalling it, 
ghostlike, from its ashes) no less than three times: first in the 
manner of Hazlitt, second in the manner of Ruskin, who had cast 
on me a passing spell, and third, in a laborious pasticcio of Sir 
Thomas Browne. So with my other works: Cain, an epic, was 
(save the mark ! ) an imitation of Sordello : Robin Hood, a tale in 
verse, took an eclectic middle course among the fields of Keats, 
Chaucer, and Morris : in Monmouth, a tragedy, I reclined on the 
bosom of Mr. Swinburne ; in my innumerable gouty-footed lyrics, 
I followed many masters ; in the first draft of The King's Pardon, 
a tragedy, I was on the trail of no lesser man than John Webster ; 
in the second draft of the same piece, with staggering versatihty, 
I had shifted my allegiance to Congreve, and of course conceived 
my fable in a less serious vein — • for it was not Congreve's verse, it 
was his exquisite prose, that I admired and sought to copy. Even 
at the age of thirteen I had tried to do justice to the inhabitants of 
the famous city of Peebles in the style of the Book of Snobs. So I 
might go on for ever, through all my abortive novels, and down to 
my later plays, of which I think more tenderly, for they were not 
only conceived at first under the bracing influence of old Dumas, 
but have met with resurrections : one, strangely bettered by another 
hand, came on the stage itself and was played by bodily actors; 
the other, originally known as Semiramis: a Tragedy, I have 
observed on bookstalls under the alias of Prince Otto. But enough 



LEARNING TO WRITE 



129 



has been said to show by what arts of impersonation, and in what 
purely ventriloquial efforts I first saw my words on paper. 

That, like it or not, is the way to learn to write ; whether I have 
profited or not, that is the way . It was so Keats learned, and there 
was never a finer temperament for literature than Keats's ; it was so 
if we could trace it out, that all men have learned ; and that is why a 
revival of letters is always accompanied or heralded by a cast back, 
to earlier and fresher models. Perhaps I hear someone cry out : But 
this is not the way to be original ! It is not; nor is there any way 
but to be born so. Nor yet, if you are born original, is there any- 
thing in this training that shall clip the wings of your originality. 
There can be none more original than Montaigne, neither could any 
be more unlike Cicero; yet no craftsman can fail to see how much 
the one must have tried in his time to imitate the other. Burns is 
the very type of a prime force in letters : he was of all men the most 
imitative. Shakespeare himself, the imperial, proceeds directly 
from a school. It is only from a school that we can expect to 
have good writers ; it is almost invariably from a school that great 
writers, these lawless exceptions, issue. Nor is there anything 
here that should astonish the considerate. Before he can tell 
what cadences he truly prefers, the student should have tried 
all that are possible; before he can choose and preserve a fit- 
ting key of words, he should long have practised the literary 
scales; and it is only after years of such gymnastic that he can 
sit down at last, legions of words swarming to his call, dozens of 
turns of phrase simultaneously bidding for his choice, and he 
himself knowing what he wants to do and (within the narrow limit 
of a man's ability) able to do it 

And it is the great point of these imitations that there still shines 
beyond the student's reach his inimitable model. Let him try as he 
please, he is still sure of failure ; and it is a very old and a very true 
saying that failure is the only highroad to success. I must have had 
some disposition to learn ; for I clear-sightedly condemned my own 
performances. I liked doing them indeed ; but when they were 
done, I could see they were rubbish. In consequence, I rarely 
showed them even to my friends ; and such friends as I chose to be 
my confidants I must have chosen well, for they had the friendliness 
to be quite plain with me. ''Padding, " said one. Another wrote ; 

K 



130 IZAAK WALTON 

'^ I cannot understand why you do lyrics so badly. " No more could 
I ! Thrice I put myself in the way of a more authoritative rebuff, 
by sending a paper to a magazine. These were returned ; and I 
was not surprised nor even pained. If they had not been looked 
at, as (like all amateurs) I suspected was the case, there was no good 
in repeating the experiment ; if they had been looked at — well, then 
I had not yet learned to write, and I must keep on learning and 
living. Lastly, I had a piece of good fortune which is the occasion 
of this paper, and by which I was able to see my literature in print, 
and to measure experimentally how far I stood from the favour 
of the public. 

IZAAK WALTON 

THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 

[First published in 1678. Walton's Lives, John Major, London, 1825. 

Walton, Izaak (1593-1683), author of 'The Compleat Angler'; born in 
Stafford; apprentice to a London ironmonger; in business for himself in 
London, 1614; freeman of the Ironmongers' Company, 1618; wrote verses 
before 1619; contributed copies of verses to books by his friends, 1638-61; 
favoured the royaHsts, 1642; married his second wife, 1646; Hved with 
Bishop George Morley at Farnham, 1662-78; hved at Winchester with his 
son-in-law, Dr. William Hawkins, canon of Winchester, 1678-83; published 
his biographies of Dr. John Donne, 1640, of Sir Henry Wotton, 165 1, of 
Richard Hooker, 1665, of George Herbert, 1670, and of Bishop Robert 
Sanderson, 1678; 'The Compleat Angler' first appeared in 1653, and the 
second edition in 1655. Cotton wrote his dialogue between 'Piscator' and 
'Viator' in 1676, and it was published as a second part in the 'Compleat 
Angler,' 5th ed., 1676. — Index and Epitome of D. N. B. 

"It is very delightful, and though more rambling than Plutarch, comes 
nearer to him than any other life-writing I can think of. Indeed, I shall be 
inclined to say that Walton had a genius for rambling rather than that it was 
his foible. The comfortable feeling he gives us that we have a definite 
purpose, mitigated with the license to forget it at the first temptation and 
take it up again as if nothing had happened, thus satisfying at once the 
conscientious and the natural man, is one of Walton's most prevailing 
charms. . . . 

"I have hesitated to say that Walton had style, because, though that 
quality, the handmaid of talent and the helpmeet of genius, have left the 
unobtrusive traces of its deft hand in certain choicer parts of Walton's writ- 
ing, — his guest-chambers as it were, — yet it does by no means pervade 
and regulate the whole. For in a book we feel the influence of style every- 
where, though we never catch it at its work, as in a house we divine the 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 



131 



neat-handed ministry of woman. Walton too often leaves his sentences in 
a clutter. But there are other qualities which, if they do not satisfy like 
style, are yet even more agreeable, draw us nearer to an author, and make 
us happier in him. Why try to discover what the charm of a book is, if only 
it charm? If I must seek a word that more than any other explains the 
pleasure which Walton's way of writing gives us, I should say it was its 
innocency. It refreshes like the society of children. I do not know whether 
he had humor, but there are passages that suggest it, as where, after quoting 
Montaigne's delightful description of how he played with his cat, he goes on: 
'Thus freely speaks Montaigne concerning cats,' as if he had taken an 
undue liberty with them; or where he makes a meteorologist of the crab, 
that 'at a certain age gets into a dead fish's shell, and like a hermit dwells 
there alone studying the wind and weather;' or where he tells us of the 
palmer- worm, that 'he will boldly and disorderly wander up and down, and 
not endure to be kept to a diet or fixed to a particular place.' And what he 
says of Sanderson — that ' he did put on some faint purposes to marry ' — 
would have arrided Lamb. These, if he meant to be droll, have that seem- 
ing inadvertence which gives its highest zest to humor and makes the eye 
twinkle with furtive connivance. Walton's weaknesses, too, must be reck- 
oned among his other attractions. He praises a meditative life, and with 
evident sincerity; but we feel that he liked nothing so well as good talk. 
His credulity leaves front and back door invitingly open. For this I rather 
praise than censure him, since it brought him the chance of a miracle at any 
odd moment, and this complacency of belief was but a lower form of the 
same quality of mind that in more serious questions gave him his equanimity 
of faith. And how persuasively beautiful that equanimity is!" — James 
Russell Low^ell, "Walton," 1889, in Latest Literary Essays and Addresses, 
pp. 76, 90-91. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston.] 

Doctor Robert Sanderson, the late learned Bishop of Lin- 
coln, whose life I intend to write with all truth and equal plainness, 
was born the nineteenth day of September in the year of our Redemp- 
tion 1587. The place of his birth was Rotherham^ in the county of 
York ; a town of good note, and the more for that Thomas Rother- 
ham, sometime archbishop of that see, was born in it ; a man whose 
great wisdom, and bounty, and sanctity of life have made it the 
more memorable : as indeed it ought also to be, for being the birth- 
place of our Robert Sanderson. And the reader will be of my 
belief, if this humble relation of his life can hold any proportion 
with his great piety, his useful learning, and his many other ex- 
traordinary endowments. 

He was the second and youngest son of Robert Sanderson, 
of Gilthwaite Hall, in the said Parish and County, Esq., by 
Elizabeth, one of the daughters of Richard Carr, of Butterthwaite 

* This is a mistake; Bishop Sanderson was born at Sheffield. 



132 IZAAK WALTON 

Hall, in the Parish of Ecclesfield, in the said County of York, 
Gentleman. 

This Robert Sanderson, the father, was descended from a 
numerous, ancient, and honourable family of his own name : for 
the search of which truth, I refer my reader, that inclines to it, 
to Dr. Thoroton's History of the Antiquities of Nottinghamshire, 
and other records; not thinking it necessary here to engage him 
into a search for bare titles, which are noted to have in them 
nothing of reality: for titles not acquired, but derived only, do 
but show us who of our ancestors have, and how they have achieved 
that honour which their descendants claim, and may not be worthy 
to enjoy. For, if those titles descend to persons that degenerate 
into vice, and break off the continued line of learning, or valour, or 
that virtue that acquired them, they destroy the very foundation 
upon which that honour was built; and all the rubbish of their 
vices ought to fall heavy on such dishonourable heads ; ought to 
fall so heavy as to degrade them of their titles, and blast their 
memories with reproach and shame. 

But our Robert Sanderson lived worthy of his name and family: 
of which one testimony may be, that Gilbert, called the Great 
Earl of Shrewsbury, thought him not unworthy to be joined with 
him as a godfather to Gilbert Sheldon, the late Lord Archbishop 
of Canterbury ; to whose merits and memory posterity — the 
clergy especially — ought to pay a reverence. 

But I return to my intended relation of Robert the son, who 
began in his youth to make the laws of God, and obedience to his 
parents, the rules of his life; seeming even then to dedicate him- 
self, and all his studies, to piety and virtue. 

And as he was inclined to this by that native goodness with 
which the wise Disposer of all hearts had endowed his, so this 
calm, this quiet and happy temper of mind — his being mild, and 
averse to oppositions — made the whole course of his life easy 
and grateful both to himself and others : and this blessed temper 
was maintained and improved by his prudent father's good example; 
and by frequent conversing with him, and scattering short apoph- 
thegms and little pleasant stories, and making useful applications of 
them, his son was in his infancy taught to abhor vanity and vice as 
monsters, and to discern the loveliness of wisdom and virtue ; and 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 



133 



by these means, and God's concurring grace, his knowledge was 
so augmented, and his native goodness so confirmed, that all 
became so habitual, as it was not easy to determine whether nature 
or education were his teachers. 

And here let me tell the reader, that these early beginnings of 
virtue were, by God's assisting grace, blessed with what St. Paul 
seemed to beg for his Philippians ; ^ namely, "That he that had be- 
gun a good work in them would finish it. " And Almighty God did : 
for his whole life was so regular and innocent, that he might have 
said at his death — and with truth and comfort — what the same 
St. Paul said after to the same Philippians, when he advised them 
to walk as they had him for an example.^ 

And this goodness of which I have spoken, seemed to increase 
as his years did; and with his goodness his learning, the founda- 
tion of which was laid in the grammar school of Rotherham — 
that being one of those three that were founded and liberally 
endowed by the said great and good Bishop of that name. And 
in this time of his being a scholar there he was observed to use 
an unwearied diligence to attain learning, and to have a serious- 
ness beyond his age, and with it a more than common modesty; 
and to be of so calm and obliging a behaviour, that the master 
and whole number of scholars loved him as one man. 

And in this love and amity he continued at that school till 
about the thirteenth year of his age; at which time his father 
designed to improve his grammar learning by removing him 
from Rotherham to one of the more noted schools of Eton or 
Westminster; and after a year's stay there, then to remove him 
thence to Oxford. But as he went with him, he called on an 
old friend, a minister of noted learning, and told him his inten- 
tions; and he, after many questions with his son, received such 
answers from him, that he assured his father, his son was so 
perfect a grammarian, that he had laid a good foundation to 
build any or all the arts upon; and therefore advised him to 
shorten his journey, and leave him at Oxford. And his father 
did so. 

His father left him there to the sole care and manage of Dr. 
Kilbie, who was then Rector of Lincoln College. And he, after 

1 Phil. i. 6. 2piiii^ ill 17. 



134 IZAAK WALTON 

some time and trial of his manners and learning, thought fit to 
enter him of that college, and after to matriculate him in the 
university, which he did the first of July, 1603; but he was not 
chosen Fellow till the third of May, 1606; at which time he had 
taken his degree of Bachelor of Arts : at the taking of which degree 
his tutor told the rector, "That his pupil Sanderson had a meta- 
physical brain and a matchless memory; and that he thought 
he had improved or made the last so by an art of his own inven- 
tion." And all the future employments of his life proved that 
his tutor was not mistaken. I must here stop my reader, and tell 
him that this Dr. Kilbie was a man of so great learning and 
wisdom, and was so excellent a critic in the Hebrew tongue, 
that he was made Professor of it in this university; and was also 
so perfect a Grecian, that he was by King James appointed to be 
one of the translators of the Bible; and that this Doctor and Mr. 
Sanderson had frequent discourses, and loved as father and 
son. The Doctor was to ride a journey into Derbyshire, and 
took Mr. Sanderson to bear him company: and they going 
together on a Sunday with the Doctor's friend to that parish 
church where they then were, found the young preacher to have 
no more discretion than to waste a great part of the hour allotted 
for his sermon in exceptions against the late translation of several 
words, — not expecting such a hearer as Dr. Kilbie, — and 
showed three reasons why a particular word should have been 
otherwise translated. When evening prayer was ended, the 
preacher was invited to the Doctor's friend's house; where after 
some other conference the Doctor told him, "He might have 
preached more useful doctrine, and not have filled his auditors' 
ears with needless exceptions against the late translation: and 
for that word for which he offered to that poor congregation three 
reasons why it ought to have been translated as he said, he and 
others had considered all them, and found thirteen more con- 
siderable reasons why it was translated as now printed;" and 
told him, "If his friend, then attending him, should prove guilty 
of such indiscretion, he should forfeit his favour." To which 
Mr. Sanderson said, " He hoped he should not." And the preacher 
was so ingenuous as to say, "He would not justify himself." 
And so I return to Oxford. In the year 1608, — July the nth, — 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 



135 



Mr. Sanderson was completed Master of Arts. I am not ignorant, 
that for the attaining these dignities the time was shorter than 
was then or is now required; but either his birth or the well 
performance of some extraordinary exercise, or some other merit, 
made him so: and the reader is requested to believe, that 'twas 
the last: and requested to believe also, that if I be mistaken in 
the time, the college records have misinformed me: but I hope 
they have not. 

In that year of 1608, he was — November the 7th — by his 
college chosen Reader of Logic in the house ; which he performed 
so well, that he was chosen again the sixth of November, 1609. 
In the year 161 3, he was chosen Sub-Rector of the college, and 
the like for the year 16 14, and chosen again to the same dignity 
and trust for the year 1616. 

In all which time and employments, his abilities and behav- 
iour were such as procured him both love and reverence from 
the whole society; there being no exception against him for 
any faults, but a sorrow for the infirmities of his being too 
timorous and bashful; both which were, God knows, so con- 
natural as they never left him. And I know not whether his 
lovers ought to wish they had ; for they proved so like the radical 
moisture in man's body, that they preserved the life of virtue 
in his soul, which by God's assisting grace never left him till 
this life put on immortality. Of which happy infirmities — if 
they may be so called — more hereafter. 

In the year 1614 he stood to be elected one of the Proctors 
for the university. And 'twas not to satisfy any ambition of 
his own, but to comply with the desire of the rector and whole 
society, of which he was a member; who had not had a Proctor 
chosen out of their college for the space of sixty years ; — namely, 
not from the year 1554, unto his standing; — and they persuaded 
him, that if he would but stand for Proctor, his merits were so 
generally known, and he so well beloved, that 'twas but ap- 
pearing, and he would infallibly carry it against any opposers; 
and told him, "That he would by that means recover a right 
or reputation that was seemingly dead to his college." By these, 
and other like persuasions, he yielded up his own reason to theirs, 
and appeared to stand for Proctor. But that election was car- 



136 IZAAK WALTON 

ried on by so sudden and secret, and by so powerful a faction, 
that he missed it. Which, when he understood, he professed seri- 
ously to his friends, " That if he were troubled at the disappoint- 
ment, it was for theirs, and not for his own sake : for he was far 
from any desire of such an employment, as must be managed 
with charge and trouble, and was too usually rewarded with hard 
censures, or hatred, or both." 

In the year following he was earnestly persuaded by Dr. Kilbie 
and others to review the logic lectures which he had read some 
years past in his college; and, that done, to methodise and print 
them, for the ease and public good of posterity. But though he 
had an averseness to appear publicly in print; yet after many 
serious solicitations, and some second thoughts of his own, he 
laid aside his modesty, and promised he would: and he did so 
in that year of 161 5. And the book proved as his friends seemed 
to prophesy, that is, of great and general use, whether we respect 
the art or the author. For logic may be said to be an art of right 
reasoning; an art that undeceives men who take falsehood for 
truth; enables men to pass a true judgment, and detect those 
fallacies, which in some men's understandings usurp the place of 
right reason. And how great a master our author was in this art 
will quickly appear from that clearness of method, argument, 
and demonstration which is so conspicuous in all his other writ- 
ings. He, who had attained to so great a dexterity in the use of 
reason himself, was best qualified to prescribe rules and direc- 
tions for the instruction of others. And I am the more satisfied 
of the excellency and usefulness of this, his first public under- 
taking, by hearing that most tutors in both universities teach Dr. 
Sanderson's Logic to their pupils, as a foundation upon which 
they are to build their future studies in philosophy. And, for 
a further confirmation of my belief, the reader may note, that 
since his book of logic was first printed there has not been less 
than ten thousand sold: and that 'tis like to continue both to 
discover truth and to clear and confirm the reason of the unborn 
world. 

It will easily be believed that his former standing for a Proc- 
tor's place, and being disappointed, must prove much displeasing 
to a man of his great wisdom and modesty, and create in him an 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 



137 



averseness to run a second hazard of his credit and content: and 
yet he was assured by Dr. Kilbie, and the Fellows of his own 
college, and most of those that had opposed him in the former 
election, that his book of logic had purchased for him such a 
belief of his learning and prudence, and his behaviour at the 
former election had got for him so great and so general a love, 
that all his former opposers repented what they had done; and 
therefore persuaded him to venture to stand a second time. And, 
upon these, and other like encouragements, he did again, but 
not without an inward unwillingness, yield up his own reason to 
theirs, and promised to stand. And he did so; and was, the 
tenth of x\pril, 1616, chosen Senior Proctor for the year following; 
Mr. Charles Crooke of Christ Church being then chosen the 
Junior. 

In this year of his being Proctor, there happened many memo- 
rable accidents; namely. Dr. Robert Abbot, Master of BalHol 
College, and Regius Professor of Divinity, — who being elected 
or consecrated Bishop of Sarum some months before, — was 
solemnly conducted out of Oxford towards his diocese by the 
heads of all houses, and the chief of all the university. And 
Dr. Prideaux succeeded him in the Professorship, in which he 
continued till the year 1642, — being then elected Bishop of 
Worcester, — and then our now Proctor, Mr. Sanderson, suc- 
ceeded him in the Regius Professorship. 

And in this year Dr. Arthur Lake — then Warden of New 
College — was advanced to the Bishopric of Bath and Wells: a 
man of whom I take myself bound in justice to say, that he has 
made the great trust committed to him the chief care and whole 
business of his life. And one testimony of this proof may be, 
that he sate usually with his chancellor in his consistory, and at 
least advised, if not assisted, in most sentences for the punish- 
ing of such offenders as deserved Church censures. And it may 
be noted that, after a sentence for penance was pronounced, he 
did very rarely, or never, allow of any commutation for the of- 
fence, but did usually see the sentence for penance executed; 
and then as usually preached a sermon on mortification and 
repentance, and did so apply them to the offenders that then 
stood before him, as begot in them a devout contrition,- and at 



138 IZAAK WALTON 

least resolutions to amend their lives: and having done that, he 
would take them — though never so poor — to dinner with him, and 
use them friendly, and dismiss them with his blessing and per- 
suasions to a virtuous life, and beg them to believe him. And 
his humility and charity, and other Christian excellencies, were 
all like this. Of all which the reader may inform himself in his 
life, truly writ, and printed before his sermons. 

And in this year also, the very prudent and very wise Lord 
Ellesmere, who was so very long Lord Chancellor of England, 
and then of Oxford, resigning up the last, the Right Honourable, 
and as magnificent, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, was 
chosen to succeed him. 

And in this year our late King Charles the First — then Prince 
of Wales — came honourably attended to Oxford ; and having 
deliberately visited the university, the schools, colleges, and 
libraries, he and his attendants were entertained with ceremonies 
and feasting suitable to their dignity and merits. 

And this year King James sent letters to the university for 
the regulating their studies; especially of the young divines: 
advising they should not rely on modern sums and systems, but 
study the fathers and councils, and the more primitive learning. 
And this advice was occasioned by the indiscreet inferences 
made by very many preachers out of Mr. Calvin's doctrine con- 
cerning predestination, universal redemption, the irresistibil- 
ity of God's grace, and of some other knotty points depending 
upon these; points which many think were not, but by inter- 
preters forced to be, Mr. Calvin's meaning ; of the truth or false- 
hood of which I pretend not to have an ability to judge; my 
meaning in this relation being only to acquaint the reader with 
the occasion of the King's letter. 

It may be observed that the various accidents of this year 
did afford our Proctor large and laudable matter to dilate and 
discourse upon: and that though his office seemed, according 
to statute and custom, to require him to do so at his leaving 
it; yet he chose rather to pass them over with some very short 
observations, and present the governors, and his other hearers, 
with rules to keep up discipline and order in the university; 
which at that time was, either by defective statutes, or want of 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 



139 



the due execution of those that were good, grown to be extremely 
irregular. And in this year also, the magisterial part of the Proc- 
tor required more diligence, and was more difficult to be man- 
aged than formerly, by reason of a multipHcity of new statutes, 
which begot much confusion; some of which statutes were then, 
and others suddenly after, put into an useful execution. And 
though these statutes were not then made so perfectly useful as 
they were designed, till Archbishop Laud's time — who assisted 
in the forming and promoting them ; — yet our present Proctor 
made them as effectual as discretion and diligence could do: 
of which one example mky seem worthy the noting; namely, 
that if in his night walk he met with irregular scholars absent 
from their colleges at university hours, or disordered by drink, 
or in scandalous company, he did not use his power of punishing 
to an extremity ; but did usually take their names, and a promise 
to appear before him unsent for next morning: and when they 
did, convinced them, with such obligingness, and reason added 
to it, that they parted from him with such resolutions as the 
man after God's own heart was possessed with, when he said, 
"There is mercy with thee, and therefore thou shalt be feared" — 
Psa. cxxx. 4. And by this and a like behaviour to all men, he 
was so happy as to lay down this dangerous employment, as but 
very few, if any, have done, even without an enemy. 

After his speech was ended, and he retired with a friend into 
a convenient privacy, he looked upon his friend with a more 
than common cheerfulness, and spake to him to this purpose: 
"I look back upon my late employment with some content to 
myself, and a great thankfulness to Almighty God that he hath 
made me of a temper not apt to provoke the meanest of man- 
kind, but rather to pass by infirmities, if noted; and in this 
employment I have had — God knows — many occasions to do 
both. And when I consider how many of a contrary temper 
are by sudden and small occasions transported and hurried by 
anger to commit such errors as they in that passion could not 
foresee, and will in their more calm and deliberate thoughts up- 
braid, and require repentance : and consider, that though repent- 
ance secures us from the punishment of any sin, yet how much 
more comfortable it is to be innocent than need pardon: and 



I40 IZAAK WALTON 

consider, that errors against men, though pardoned both by 
God and them, do yet leave such anxious and upbraiding im- 
pressions in the memory, as abates of the offender's content: 

— when I consider all this, and that God hath of his goodness 
given me a temper that hath prevented me from running into 
such enormities, I remember my temper with joy and thankful- 
ness. And though I cannot say with David — I wish I could, 

— that therefore "his praise shall always be in my mouth" 
(Psa. xxxiv. i) ; yet I hope, that by his grace, and that grace 
seconded by my endeavours, it shall never be blotted out of my 
memory; and I now beseech Almighty God that it never 
may." 

And here I must look back, and mention one passage more 
in his Proctorship, which is, that Gilbert Sheldon, the late Lord 
Archbishop of Canterbury, was this year sent to Trinity College 
in that university; and not long after his entrance there, a 
letter was sent after him from his godfather — the father of our 
Proctor — to let his son know it, and commend his godson to 
his acquaintance, and to more than a common care of his be- 
haviour; which proved a pleasing injunction to our Proctor, 
who was so gladly obedient to his father's desire, that he some few 
days after sent his servitor to entreat Mr. Sheldon to his chamber 
next morning. But it seems Mr. Sheldon having — like a young 
man as he was — run into some such irregularity as made him 
conscious he had trangressed his statutes, did therefore appre- 
hend the Proctor's invitation as an introduction to punishment; 
the fear of which made his bed restless that night: but, at their 
meeting the next morning, that fear vanished immediately by 
the Proctor's cheerful countenance, and the freedom of their 
discourse of friends. And let me tell my reader, that this first 
meeting proved the beginning of as spiritual a friendship as 
human nature is capable of; of a friendship free from all self- 
ends: and it continued to be so, till death forced a separation 
of it on earth ; but it is now reunited in heaven. 

And now, having given this account of his behaviour, and the 
considerable accidents, in his Proctorship, I proceed to tell my 
reader, that, this busy employment being ended, he preached 
his sermon for his degree of Bachelor in Divinity in as elegant 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 141 

Latin, and as remarkable for the matter, as hath been preached 
in that university since that day. And having well performed 
his other exercises for that degree, he took it the nine-and-twen- 
tieth of May following, having been ordained deacon and priest 
in the year 161 1, by John King, then Bishop of London, who 
had not long before been Dean of Christ Church, and then knew 
him so well, that he became his most affectionate friend. And 
in this year, being then about the twenty-ninth of his age, he 
took from the university a licence to preach. 

In the year 1618, he was by Sir Nicholas Sanderson, Lord 
Viscount Castleton, presented to the rectory of Wibberton, not 
far from Boston, in the county of Lincoln, a living of very good 
value; but it lay in so low and wet a part of that country as was 
inconsistent with his health. And health being — next to a good 
conscience — the greatest of God's blessings in this Hfe, and 
requiring therefore of every man a care and diligence to pre- 
serve it, he, apprehending a danger of losing it, if he continued 
at Wibberton a second winter, did therefore resign it back into 
the hands of his worthy kinsman and patron, about one year 
after his donation of it to him. 

And about this time of his resignation he was presented to 
the rectory of Boothby Pannell, in the same county of Lincoln; 
a town which has been made famous, and must continue to be 
famous, because Dr. Sanderson, the humble and learned Dr. 
Sanderson, was more than forty years parson of Boothby Pannell, 
and from thence dated all or most of his matchless writings. 

To this living — which was of no less value, but a purer air 
than Wibberton — he was presented by Thomas Harrington, 
of the same county and parish, Esq., who was a gentleman of 
a very ancient family, and of great use and esteem in his country 
during his whole life. And in this Boothby Pannell the meek 
and charitable Dr. Sanderson and his patron lived with an endear- 
ing, mutual, and comfortable friendship, till the death of the 
last put a period to it. 

About the time that he was made parson of Boothby Pannell, 
he resigned his Fellowship of Lincoln College unto the then 
Rector and Fellows; and his resignation is recorded in these 
words : 



142 IZAAK WALTON 

Ego Robertus Sanderson perpetuus, etc. 

I, Robert Sanderson, Fellow of the College of St. Mary's and 
All-Saints, commonly called Lincoln College, in the University of 
Oxford, do freely and wiUingly resign into the hands of the Rector 
and Fellows, all the right and title that I have in the said college, 
wishing to them and their successors all peace, and piety, and 
happiness, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost. Amen. 

May 6, 1691. Robert Sanderson. 

And not long after this resignation, he was by the then Bishop 
of York, or the King sede vacante, made Prebend of the Collegiate 
Church of Southwell in that diocese; and shortly after of Lincoln 
by the bishop of that see. 

And being now resolved to set down his rest in a quiet privacy 
at Boothby Pannell, and looking back with some sadness upon his 
removal from his general acquaintance left in Oxford, and the pecul- 
iar pleasures of a university life ; he could not but think the want 
of society would render this of a country parson the more uncom- 
fortable, by reason of that want of conversation ; and therefore he 
did put on some faint purposes to marry. For he had considered, 
that though marriage be cumbered with more worldly care than a 
single life ; yet a complying and a prudent wife changes those very 
cares into so mutual a content, as makes them become like the 
sufferings of St. Paul (Colos. i. 24), which he would not have wanted, 
because they occasioned his rejoicing in them. And he, having 
well considered this, and observed the secret unutterable joys that 
children beget in parents, and the mutual pleasures and contented 
trouble of their daily care and constant endeavours to bring up 
those httle images of themselves, so as to make them as happy as all 
those cares and endeavours can make them : he, having considered 
all this, the hopes of such happiness turned his faint purposes into 
a positive resolution to marry. And he was so happy as to obtain 
Anne, the daughter of Henry Nelson, Bachelor in Divinity, then 
Rector of Haugham, in the county of Lincoln, a man of noted worth 
and learning. And the Giver of all good things was so good to 
him, as to give him such a wife as was suitable to his own desires ; 
a wife that made his life happy by being always content when he 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 



143 



was cheerful; that divided her joys with him, and abated of his 
sorrow, by bearing a part of that burden ; a wife that demonstrated 
her affection by a cheerful obedience to all his desires, during the 
whole course of his life; and at his death too, for she outlived him. 

And in this Boothby Pannell, he either found or made his parish- 
ioners peaceable and complying with him in the decent and regular 
service of God. And thus his parish, his patron, and he lived 
together in a religious love and a contented quietness ; he not trou- 
bling their thoughts by preaching high and useless notions, but such 
plain truths as were necessary to be known, believed and practised, 
in order to their salvation. And their assent to what he taught was 
testified by such a conformity to his doctrine, as declared they be- 
lieved and loved him. For he would often say, ''That, without the 
Jast, the most evident truths — heard as from an enemy, or an evil 
liver — either are not, or are at least the less effectual; and do 
usually rather harden than convince the hearer." 

And this excellent man did not think his duty discharged by 
only reading the Church prayers, catechising, preaching, and ad- 
ministering the Sacraments seasonably; but thought — if the law 
or the canons may seem to enjoin no more, — yet that God would 
require more, than the defective laws of man's making can or do 
enjoin ; the performance of that inward law which Almighty God 
hath imprinted in the conscience of all good Christians, and in- 
clines those whom he loves to perform. He, considering this, did 
therefore become a law to himself, practising what his conscience 
told him was his duty, in reconciling differences, and preventing 
law-suits, both in his parish and in the neighbourhood. To which 
may be added his often visiting sick and disconsolate families, 
persuading them to patience, and raising them from dejection by 
his advice and cheerful discourse, and by adding his own alms, 
if there were any so poor as to need it: considering how accept- 
able it is to Almighty God, when we do as we are advised by 
St. Paul (Gal. vi. 2), " Help to bear one another's burden," either 
of sorrow or want: and what a comfort it will be, when the 
Searcher of all hearts shall call us to a strict account for that evil 
we have done, and the good we have omitted, to remember we 
have comforted and been helpful to a dejected or distressed 
family. 



144 IZAAK WALTON 

And that his practice was to do good, one example may be, 
that he met with a poor dejected neighbour, that complained he 
had taken a meadow, the rent of which was £g a year; and when 
the hay was made ready to be carried into his barn, several days' 
constant rain had so raised the water, that a sudden flood carried 
all away, and his rich landlord would bate him no rent; and 
that unless he had half abated, he and seven children were 
utterly undone. It may be noted, that in this age, there are a 
sort of people so unhke the God of Mercy, so void of the bowels 
of pity, that they love only themselves and children; love them 
so, as not to be concerned whether the rest of mankind waste 
their days in sorrow or shame; people that are cursed with 
riches, and a mistake that nothing but riches can make them 
and theirs happy. But it was not so with Dr. Sanderson; for 
he was concerned, and spoke comfortably to the poor dejected 
man; bade him go home and pray, and not load himself 
with sorrow, for he would go to his landlord next morning; 
and if his landlord would not abate what he desired, he a.nd a 
friend would pay it for him. 

To the landlord he went the next day, and, in a conference, the 
Doctor presented to him the sad condition of his poor dejected 
tenant ; telling him how much God is pleased when men compas- 
sionate the poor : and told him, that though God loves sacrifice, yet 
he loves mercy so much better, that he is pleased when called the 
God of Mercy. And told him, the riches he was possessed of were 
given him by that God of Mercy, who would not be pleased if he, 
that had so much given, yea, and forgiven him too, should prove like 
the rich steward in the gospel, "that took his fellow-servant by the 
throat to make him pay the utmost farthing. " This he told him : 
and told him, that the law of this nation — by which law he claims 
his rent — does not undertake to make men honest or merciful; 
but does what it can to restrain men from being dishonest or unmer- 
ciful, and yet was defective in both : and that taking any rent from 
his poor tenant, for what God suffered him not to enjoy, though the 
law allowed him to do so, yet if he did so, he was too like that rich 
steward which he had mentioned to him ; and told him that riches 
so gotten, and added to his great estate, would, as Job says, "prove 
like gravel in his teeth:" would in time so corrode his conscience, 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 145 

or become so nauseous when he lay upon his death-bed, that he 
would then labour to vomit it up, and not be able : and therefore 
advised him, being very rich, to make friends of his unrighteous 
Mammon, before that evil day come upon him: but however, 
neither for his own sake, nor for God's sake, to take any rent of his 
poor, dejected, sad tenant; for that were to gain a temporal, and 
lose his eternal happiness. These, and other such reasons were 
urged with so grave and compassionate an earnestness, that the 
landlord forgave his tenant the whole rent. 

The reader will easily believe that Dr. Sanderson, who was so 
meek and merciful, did suddenly and gladly carry this comfortable 
news to the dejected tenant; and we believe, that at the telling of it 
there was mutual rejoicing. It was one of Job's boasts, that ^'he 
had seen none perish for want of clothing : and that he had often 
made the heart of the widow to rejoice" (Job xxxi. 19). And 
doubtless Dr. Sanderson might have made the same religious boast 
of this and very many like occasions. But, since he did not, I re- 
joice that I have this just occasion to do it for him ; and that I can 
tell the reader, I might tire myself and him, in telling how like the 
whole course of Dr. Sanderson 's life was to this which I have 
now related. 

Thus he went on in an obscure and quiet privacy, doing good 
daily both by word and by deed, as often as any occasion offered 
itself; yet not so obscurely, but that his very great learning, pru- 
dence, and piety, were much noted and valued by the bishop of his 
diocese, and by most of the nobility and gentry of that county. By 
the first of which he was often summoned to preach many visitation 
sermons, and by the latter at many assizes. Which sermons, though 
they were much esteemed by them that procured, and were fit to 
judge them; yet they were the less valued, because he read them, 
which he was forced to do ; for though he had an extraordinary 
memory, — even the art of it, — yet he had such an innate in- 
vincible fear and bashfulness, that his memory was wholly useless, 
as to the repetition of his sermons as he had writ them; which gave 
occasion to say, when they were first printed and exposed to cen- 
sure, which was in the year 1632, — ''that the best sermons that 
were ever read were never preached." 

In this contented obscurity he continued, till the learned and 



146 IZAAK WALTON 

good Archbishop Laud, who knew him well in Oxford, — for he was 
his contemporary there, — told the King — 'twas the knowing and 
conscientious King Charles the First — that there was one Mr. San- 
derson, an obscure country minister, that was of such sincerity, and 
so excellent in all casuistical learning, that he desired his Majesty 
would make him his chaplain. The King granted it most will- 
ingly, and gave the Bishop charge to hasten it, for he had longed 
to discourse with a man that had dedicated his studies to that 
useful part of learning. The Bishop forgot not the King's desire, 
and Mr. Sanderson was made his Chaplain in Ordinary in No- 
vember following, 1 63 1. And when they became known to each 
other, the King did put many cases of conscience to him, and 
received from him such deliberate, safe, and clear solutions, 
as gave him great content in conversing with him; so that, at 
the end of his month's attendance, the King told him, *' he should 
long for the next November; for he resolved to have a more in- 
ward acquaintance with him, when that month and he returned." 
And when the month and he did return, the good King was 
never absent from his sermons, and would usually say, '*I 
carry my ears to hear other preachers; but I carry my con- 
science to hear Mr. Sanderson, and to act accordingly. " And this 
ought not to be concealed from posterity, that the King thought 
what he spake ; for he took him to be his adviser in that quiet part 
of his life, and he proved to be his comforter in those days of his 
affliction, when he apprehended himself to be in danger of death or 
deposing. Of which more hereafter. 

In the first Parliament of this good King, — which was 1625, 
— he was chosen to be a Clerk of the Convocation for the Diocese 
of Lincoln ; which I here mention, because about that time did arise 
many disputes about predestination, and the many critical points 
that depend upon, or are interwoven in it; occasioned as was said, 
by a disquisition of new principles of Mr. Calvin's, though others 
say they were before his time. But of these Dr. Sanderson then 
drew up, for his own satisfaction, such a scheme — he called it 
Pax Ecclesi(E — as then gave himself, and hath since given others, 
such satisfaction, that it still remains to be of great estimation 
among the most learned. He was also chosen Clerk of all the Con- 
vocations during that good King's reign. Which I here tell my 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 



147 



reader, because I shall hereafter have occasion to mention that Con- 
vocation in 1640, the unhappy Long Parliament, and some debates 
of the predestination points as they have been since charitably 
handled betwixt him, the learned Dr. Hammond, and Dr. Pierce, 
the now Reverend Dean of Salisbury. 

In the year 1636, his Majesty, then in his progress, took a fair 
occasion to visit Oxford, and to take an entertainment for two days 
for himself and honourable attendants; which the reader ought to 
believe was suitable to their dignities. But this is mentioned, 
because at the King's coming thither. Dr. Sanderson did attend him, 
and was then — the 31st of August — created Doctor of Divinity; 
which honour had an addition to it, by having many of the nobility 
of this nation then made Doctors and Masters of Arts with him; 
some of whose names shall be recorded and live with his, and none 
shall outlive it. First, Dr. Curie and Dr. Wren, who were then 
Bishops of Winton and of Norwich, — and had formerly taken their 
degrees in Cambridge, were with him created Doctors of Divinity 
in his University. So was Meric, the son of the learned Isaac 
Casaubon; and Prince Rupert, who still lives, the then Duke of 
Lenox, Earl of Hereford, Earl of Essex, of Berkshire, and very 
many others of noble birth — too many to be named — were then 
created Masters of Arts. 

Some years before the unhappy Long ParHament, this nation 
being then happy and in peace, — though inwardly sick of being 
well, — namely, in the year 1639, a discontented party of the Scots 
Church were zealously restless for another reformation of their 
Kirk government; and to that end created a new Covenant, for 
the general taking of which they pretended to petition the King 
for his assent, and that he would enjoin the taking of it by all 
of that nation. But this petition was not to be presented to him 
by a committee of eight or ten men of their fraternity; but by 
so many thousands, and they so armed as seemed to force an 
assent to what they seemed to request ; so that though forbidden by 
the King, yet they entered England, and in the heat of zeal took and 
plundered Newcastle, where the King was forced to meet them with 
an army : but upon a treaty and some concessions, he sent them back, 
— though not so rich as they intended, yet, — for that time, without 
bloodshed. But, oh ! this peace, and this Covenant, were but the 



148 IZAAK WALTON 

forerunners of war, and the many miseries that followed : for in the 
year following there were so many chosen into the Long Parliament, 
that were of a conjunct council with these very zealous and as fac- 
tious reformers, as begot such a confusion by the several desires and 
designs in many of the members of that Parliament, and at last in 
the very common people of this nation, that they were so lost by 
contrary designs, fears, and confusions, as to believe the Scots and 
their Covenant would restore them to their former tranquillity. And 
to that end the Presbyterian party of this nation did again, in the 
year 1643, invite the Scotch Covenanters back into England: and 
hither they came marching with it gloriously upon their pikes and 
in their hats, with this motto : " For the Crown and Covenant of 
both Kingdoms. " This I saw, and suffered by it. But when I look 
back upon the ruin of families, the bloodshed, the decay of common 
honesty, and how the former piety and plain dealing of this now 
sinful nation is turned into cruelty and cunning, I praise God that 
he prevented me from being of that party which helped to bring in 
this Covenant, and those sad confusions that have followed it. And 
I have been the bolder to say this to myself, because in a sad dis- 
course with Dr. Sanderson, I heard him make the like grateful 
acknowledgment. 

This digression is intended for the better information of the 
reader in what will follow concerning Dr. Sanderson. And first, 
that the Covenanters of this nation, and their party in Parliament, 
made many exceptions against the Common Prayer and ceremonies 
of the Church and seemed restless for a reformation : and though 
their desires seemed not reasonable to the King, and the learned 
Dr. Laud, then Archbishop of Canterbury; yet, to quiet their con- 
sciences, and prevent future confusion, they did, in the year 1641, 
desire Dr. Sanderson to call two more of the Convocation to advise 
with him, and that he would then draw up some such safe alterations 
as he thought fit in the service-book, and abate some of the cere- 
monies that were least material for satisfying their consciences : — 
and to this end they did meet together privately twice a week at the 
Dean of Westminster's house, for the space of three months or more. 
But not long after that time, when Dr. Sanderson had made the 
reformation ready for a view, the Church and State were both 
fallen into such a confusion, that Dr. Sanderson's model for refor- 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 



149 



mation became then useless. Nevertheless, his reputation was such, 
that he was, in the year 1642, proposed by both Houses of Parlia- 
ment to the King, then in Oxford, to be one of their trustees for 
the settHng of Church affairs, and was allowed of by the King to 
be so : but that treaty came to nothing. 

In the year 1643, the two Houses of Parliament took upon them 
to make an ordinance, and call an assembly of divines, to debate and 
settle some Church controversies, of which many were unfit to judge; 
in which Dr. Sanderson was also named, but did not appear; I 
suppose for the same reason that many other worthy and learned 
men did forbear, the summons wanting the King's authority. And 
here I must look back, and tell the reader, that in the year 1642, he 
was, July 2ist, named by a more undoubted authority to a more 
noble employment, which was to be Professor Regius of Divinity 
in Oxford : but, though knowledge be said to puff up, yet his mod- 
esty and too mean an opinion of his great abilities, and some other 
real or pretended reasons, — expressed in his speech, when he first 
appeared in the Chair, and since printed, — kept him from enter- 
ing into it till October, 1646. 

He did, for about a year's time, continue to read his matchless 
lectures, which were first de Juramento, a point very difficult, and 
at that time very dangerous to be handled as it ought to be. But 
this learned man, as he was eminently furnished with abilities to 
satisfy the consciences of men upon that important subject; so he 
wanted not courage to assert the true obligation of oaths in a degen- 
erate age, when men had made perjury a main part of their religion. 
How much the learned world stands obliged to him for these, and 
his following lectures de Conscientid, I shall not attempt to declare, 
as being very sensible that the best pens must needs fall short in the 
commendation of them: so that I shall only add, that they con- 
tinued to this day, and will do for ever, as a complete standard for 
the resolution of the most material doubts in casuistical divinity. 
And therefore I proceed to tell the reader, that about the time of 
his reading those lectures, — the King being then prisoner in 
the Isle of Wight, — the Parliament had sent the Covenant, 
the Negative Oath, and I know not what more, to be taken by 
the Doctor of the Chair, and all heads of houses; and all other 
inferior scholars, of what degree soever, were all to take these oaths 



150 IZAAK WALTON 

by a fixed day; and those that did not, to abandon their college 
and the university too, within twenty-four hours after the beating 
of a drum ; for if they remained longer, they were to be proceeded 
against as spies. 

Dr. Laud, then Archbishop of Canterbury, the Earl of Strafford, 
and many others, had been formerly murdered by this wicked 
Parliament; but the King yet was not: and the university had 
yet some faint hopes that in a treaty then in being, or pretended 
to be suddenly, there might be such an agreement made between 
King and Parliament, that the dissenters in the university might 
both preserve their consciences and subsistence which they then 
enjoyed by their colleges. 

And being possessed of this mistaken hope, that the Parliament 
were not yet grown so merciless as not to allow manifest reason 
for their not submitting to the enjoined oaths, the university 
appointed twenty delegates to meet, consider, and draw up a 
manifesto to the Parliament, why they could not take those oaths 
but by violation of their consciences: and of these delegates Dr. 
Sheldon, — late Archbishop of Canterbury, — Dr. Hammond, Dr. 
Sanderson, Dr. Morley, — now Bishop of Winchester, — and that 
most honest and as judicious civil lawyer. Dr. Zouch, were a part; 
the rest I cannot now name: but the whole number of the dele- 
gates requested Dr. Zouch to draw up the law part, and give it to 
Dr. Sanderson: and he was requested to methodise and add 
what referred to reason and conscience, and put into form. He 
yielded to their desires and did so. And then, after they had been 
read in a full convocation, and allowed of, they were printed in 
Latin, that the Parliament's proceedings and the university's 
sufferings might be manifested to all nations: and the imposers 
of these oaths might repent, or answer them : but they were past the 
first; and for the latter, I might swear they neither can, nor ever 
will. And these reasons were also suddenly turned into English 
by Dr. Sanderson, that those of these three kingdoms might 
the better judge of the loyal party's sufferings. 

About this time the Independents — who were then grown 
to be the most powerful part of the army — had taken the King 
from a close to a more large imprisonment; and, by their own 
pretences to liberty of conscience, were obliged to allow some- 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 151 

what of that to the King, who had, in the year 1646, sent for 
Dr. Sanderson, Dr. Hammond, Dr. Sheldon, — the late Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, — and Dr. Morley, — the now Bishop of 
Winchester, — to attend him, in order to advise with them, how 
far he might with a good conscience com.ply with the proposals 
of the Parliament for a peace in Church and State: but these, 
having been then denied him by the Presbyterian Parliament, 
were now allowed him by those in present power. And as those 
other divines, so Dr. Sanderson gave his attendance on his Majesty 
also in the Isle of Wight, preached there before him, and had in 
that attendance many, both public and private, conferences with 
him, to his Majesty's great satisfaction. At which time he desired 
Dr. Sanderson, that, being the Parliament had proposed to him 
the abolishing of episcopal government in the Church, as inconsist- 
ent with monarchy, that he would consider of it; and declare 
his judgment. He undertook to do so, and did it ; but it might not 
be printed till our King's happy restoration, and then it was. And 
at Dr. Sanderson's taking his leave of his Majesty in his last 
attendance on him, the King requested him to betake himself 
to the writing cases of conscience for the good of posterity. To 
which his answer was, "That he was now grown old, and unfit 
to write cases of conscience." But the King was so bold with 
him as to say, " It was the simplest answer he ever heard from 
Dr. Sanderson ; for no young man was fit to be a judge, or write 
cases of conscience." And let me here take occasion to tell the 
reader this truth, not commonly known; that in one of these con- 
ferences this conscientious King told Dr. Sanderson, or one of them 
that then waited with him, " that the remembrance of two errors did 
much affiict him ; which were, his assent to the Earl of Strafford's 
death, and the abolishing Episcopacy in Scotland ; and that if God 
ever restored him to be in a peaceable possession of his crown, he 
would demonstrate his repentance by a public confession, and a 
voluntary penance," — I think barefoot — from the Tower of 
London, or Whitehall, to St. Paul's Church, and desire the people 
to intercede with God for his pardon. I am sure one of them 
that told it me lives still, and will witness it. And it ought to be 
observed, that Dr. Sanderson's lectures de Juramento were so ap- 
proved and valued by the King, that in this time of his imprison- 



152 IZAAK WALTON 

ment and solitude he translated them into exact English ; desiring 
Dr. Juxon, — then Bishop of London, — Dr. Hammond, and Sir 
Thomas Herbert, who then attended him, to compare them with 
the original. The last still lives, and has declared it, with some 
other of that King's excellencies, in a letter under his own hand, 
which was lately showed me by Sir William Dugdale, King at 
Arms. The book was designed to be put into the King's library 
at St. James's; but, I doubt, not now to be found there. I 
thought the honour of the author and the translator to be both 
so much concerned in this relation, that it ought not to be 
concealed from the reader, and 'tis therefore here inserted. 

I now return to Dr. Sanderson in the Chair in Oxford; where 
they that complied not in taking the Covenant, Negative Oath, 
and Parliament Ordinance for Church discipline and worship, 
were under a sad and daily apprehension of expulsion: for the 
visitors were daily expected, and both city and university full of 
soldiers, and a party of Presbyterian divines, that were as greedy 
and ready to possess, as the ignorant and ill-natured visitors were 
to eject the dissenters out of their colleges and livehhoods: but, 
notwithstanding. Dr. Sanderson did still continue to read his 
lecture, and did, to the very faces of those Presbyterian divines 
and soldiers, read with so much reason, and with a calm fortitude 
make such applications, as, if they were not, they ought to have 
been ashamed, and begged pardon of God and him, and forborne to 
do what followed. But these thriving sinners were hardened; 
and as the visitors expelled the orthodox, they, without scruple or 
shame, possessed themselves of their colleges; so that, with the 
rest. Dr. Sanderson was in June, 1648, forced to pack up and be 
gone, and thank God he was not imprisoned, as Dr. Sheldon, and 
Dr. Hammond, and others then were. 

I must now again look back to Oxford, and tell my reader, 
that the year before this expulsion, when the university had 
denied this subscription, and apprehended the danger of that 
visitation which followed, they sent Dr. Morley, then Canon of 
Christ Church, now Lord Bishop of Winchester, and others, to 
petition the Parliament for recalling the injunction, or a mitiga- 
tion of it, or accept of their reasons why they could not take the 
oaths enjoined them ; and the petition was by Parliament referred 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 153 

to a committee to hear and report the reasons to the House, and a 
day set for hearing them. This done, Dr. Morley and the rest 
went to inform and see counsel, to plead their cause on the day 
appointed; but there had been so many committed for pleading, 
that none durst undertake it ; for at this time the privileges of that 
Parliament were become a Noli me tangere, as sacred and useful 
to them, as traditions ever were, or are now, to the Church of 
Rome ; their number must never be known, and therefore not with- 
out danger to be meddled with. For which reason Dr. Morley was 
forced, for want of counsel, to plead the university's reasons for 
non-compliance with the Parliament's injunctions: and though 
this was done with great reason, and a boldness equal to the 
justice of his cause ; yet the effect of it was, but that he and the 
rest appearing with him were so fortunate as to return to Oxford 
without commitment. This was some few days before the vis- 
itors and more soldiers were sent down to drive the Dissenters 
out of the university. And one that was, at this time of Dr. 
Morley's pleading, a powerful man in the Parliament, and of 
that committee, observing Dr. Morley's behaviour and reason, 
and inquiring of him and hearing a good report of his morals, 
was therefore willing to afford him a peculiar favour; and, that 
he might express it, sent for me that relate this story, and knew 
Dr. Morley well, and told me, "he had such a love for Dr. Morley, 
that knowing he would not take the oaths, and must therefore be 
ejected his college, and leave Oxford ; he desired I would therefore 
write to him to ride out of Oxford, when the visitors came into it, 
and not return till they left it, and he should be sure then to return 
in safety; and that he should, without taking any oath or other 
molestation, enjoy his canon's place in his college." I did receive 
this intended kindness with a sudden gladness, because I was sure 
the party had a power, and as sure he meant to perform it, and 
did therefore write the Doctor word : and his answer was, that I 
must not fail to return my friend — who still lives — his humble 
and undissembled thanks, though he could not accept of his 
intended kindness; for when the Dean, Dr. Gardner, Dr. Paine, 
Dr. Hammond, Dr. Sanderson and all the rest of the college were 
turned out, except Dr. Wall, he should take it to be, if not a sin, 
yet a shame, to be left behind with him only. Dr. Wall I knew, 
and will speak nothing of him, for he is dead. 



154 



IZAAK WALTON 



It may easily be imagined with what a joyful wilHngness these 
self-loving reformers took possession of all vacant preferments, 
and with what reluctance others parted with their beloved colleges 
and subsistence: but their consciences were dearer than their 
subsistence, and out they went; the reformers possessing them 
without shame or scruple : where I leave these scruple-mongers, 
and make an account of the then present affairs of London, to 
be the next employment of my reader's patience. 

And in London all the bishop's houses were turned to be prisons, 
and they filled with divines, that would not take the Covenant, 
or forbear reading Common Prayer, or that were accused for some 
faults like these. For it may be noted, that about this time the 
Parliament set out a proclamation, to encourage all laymen that 
had occasion to complain of their ministers for being troublesome or 
scandalous, or that conformed not to orders of Parliament, to make 
their complaint to a committee for that purpose ; and the minister, 
though a hundred miles from London, should appear there, and 
give satisfaction, or be sequestered ; — and you may be sure no 
parish could want a covetous, or malicious, or cross-grained 
complaint; — by which means all prisons in London, and in 
some other places, became the sad habitations of conforming 
divines. 

And about this time the Bishop of Canterbury having been 
by an unknown law condemned to die, and the execution sus- 
pended for some days, many of the malicious citizens, fearing his 
pardon, shut up their shops, professing not to open them till 
justice was executed. This malice and madness is scarce credible ; 
but I saw it. 

The bishops had been voted out of the House of ParHament, 
and some upon that occasion sent to the Tower: which made 
many Covenanters rejoice, and beheve Mr. Brightman — who 
probably was a good and well-meaning man — to be inspired in 
his Comment on the Apocalypse, an abridgment of which was 
now printed, and called Mr. Brightman's Revelation of the Revela- 
tion. And though he was grossly mistaken in other things, yet, 
because he had made the Churches of Geneva and Scotland, which 
had no bishops, to be Philadelphia in the Apocalypse, the angel 
that God loved (Rev. iii. 7-13), and the power of prelacy to be 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 155 

Anti-christ, the evil angel, which the House of Commons had now 
so spewed up, as never to recover their dignity; therefore did those 
Covenanters approve and applaud Mr. Brightman for discovering 
and foretelling the bishops' downfall ; so that they both railed at 
them, and rejoiced to buy good pennyworths of their land, which 
their friends of the House of Commons did afford them, as a 
reward of their diligent assistance to pull them down. 

And the bishop's power being now vacated, the common 
people were made so happy, as every parish might choose their 
own minister, and tell him when he did, and when he did not, 
preach true doctrine : and by this and Hke means, several churches 
had several teachers, that prayed and preached for and against 
one another: and engaged their hearers to contend furiously 
for truths which they understood not ; some of which I shall men- 
tion in the discourse that follows. 

I have heard of two men, that in their discourse undertook 
to give a character of a third person : and one concluded he was 
a very honest man, ''for he was beholden to him; " and the other 
that he was not, "for he was not beholden to him." And some- 
thing like this was in the designs both of the Covenanters and 
Independents, the last of which were now grown both as numerous 
and as powerful as the former : for though they differed much in 
many principles, and preached against each other, one making 
it a sign of being in the state of grace, if we were but zealous for 
the Covenant ; and the other, that we ought to buy and sell by a 
measure, and to allow the same liberty of conscience to others, 
which we by scripture claim to ourselves; and therefore not to 
force any to swear the Covenant contrary to their consciences, 
and lose both their livings and liberties too. Though these differed 
thus in their conclusions, yet they both agreed in their practice to 
preach down Common Prayer, and get into the best sequestered 
livings; and whatever became of the true owners, their wives 
and children, yet to continue in them without the least scruple 
of conscience. 

They also made other strange observations of Election, Reproba- 
tion, and Free Will, and the other points dependent upon these; 
such as the wisest of the common people were not fit to judge of; 
I am sure I am not : though I must mention some of them histori- 



156 IZAAK WALTON 

cally in a more proper place, when I have brought my reader with me 
to Dr. Sanderson at Boothby Pannell. 

And in the way thither I must tell him, that a very Covenanter, 
and a Scot too, that came into England with his unhappy Covenant, 
was got into a good sequestered living by the help of a Presbyterian 
parish, which had got the true owner out. And this Scotch 
Presbyterian, being well settled in this good living, began to reform 
the churchyard, by cutting down a large yew-tree, and some other 
trees that were an ornament to the place, and very often a shelter to 
the parishioners; who, excepting against him for so doing, were 
answered, "That the trees were his, and 'twas lawful for every man 
to use his own, as he, and not as they thought fit." I have heard, 
but do not aflSrm it, that no action lies against him that is so wicked 
as to steal the winding-sheet of a dead body after it is buried ; and 
have heard the reason to be, because none were supposed to be 
so void of humanity ; and that such a law would vilify that nation 
that would but suppose so vile a man to be born in it : nor would 
one suppose any man to do what this Covenanter did. And 
whether there were any law against him, I know not; but pity the 
parish the less for turning out their legal minister. 

We have now overtaken Dr. Sanderson at Boothby Parish, 
where he hoped to enjoy himself, though in a poor, yet in a quiet 
and desired privacy; but it proved otherwise ; for all corners of the 
nation were filled with Covenanters, confusion, committee-men, and 
soldiers, serving each other to their several ends, of revenge, or 
power, or profit : and these committee-men and soldiers were most 
of them so possessed with this Covenant, that they became like 
those that were infected with that dreadful plague of Athens ; the 
plague of which plague was, that they by it became maliciously 
restless to get into company, and to joy, — so the historian saith, — 
when they had infected others, even those of their most beloved 
or nearest friends or relations : and though there might be some of 
these Covenanters that were beguiled and meant well ; yet such were 
the generality of them, and temper of the times, that you may 
be sure Dr. Sanderson, who though quiet and harmless, yet an 
eminent dissenter from them, could not live peaceably; nor did 
he; for the soldiers would appear, and visibly disturb him in 
the church when he read prayers, pretending to advise him how 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 157 

God was to be served most acceptably : which he not approving, 
but continuing to observe order and decent behaviour in reading 
the Church service, they forced his book from him, and tore it, 
expecting extemporary prayers. 

At this time he was advised by a Parhament man of power 
and note, that valued and loved him much, not to be strict in 
reading all the Common Prayer, but make some little variation, 
especially if the soldiers came to watch him ; for then it might not 
be in the power of him and his other friends to secure him from 
taking the Covenant, or sequestration : for which reasons he did 
vary somewhat from the strict rules of the rubric. I will set 
down the very words of confession which he used, as I have it under 
his own hand ; and tell the reader, that all his other variations were 
as little, and much like to this. 



HIS CONFESSION 

''O Almighty God and merciful Father, we, thy unworthy 
servants, do with shame and sorrow confess, that we have all 
our life long gone astray out of thy ways like lost sheep; and 
that, by following too much the vain devices and desires of our 
own hearts, we have grievously offended against thy holy laws, 
both in thought, word, and deed ; we have many times left undone 
those good duties which we might and ought to have done; and 
we have many times done those evils, when we might have avoided 
them, which we ought not to have done. We confess, O Lord ! 
that there is no health at all, nor help in any creature to relieve 
us; but all our hope is in thy mercy, whose justice we have by our 
sins so far provoked. Have mercy therefore upon us, O Lord ! 
have mercy upon us, miserable offenders : spare us, good God, who 
confess our faults, that we perish not; but, according to thy 
gracious promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord, 
restore us upon our true repentance into thy grace and favour. 
And grant, O most merciful Father ! for his sake, that we hence- 
forth study to serve and please thee by leading a godly, righteous, and 
a sober life, to the glory of thy holy name, and the eternal comfort 
of our own souls, through Jesus Christ our Lord." Amen. 



158 IZAAK WALTON 

In these disturbances of tearing his service-book, a neighbour 
came on a Sunday, after the evening service was ended, to visit and 
condole with him for the affront offered by the soldiers. To whom 
he spake with a composed patience, and said : " God hath restored 
me to my desired privacy, with my wife and children ; where I hoped 
to have met with quietness, and it proves not so : but I will labour 
to be pleased, because God, on whom I depend, sees it is not fit 
for me to be quiet. I praise him, that he hath by his grace pre- 
vented me from making shipwreck of a good conscience to main- 
tain me in a place of great reputation and profit : and though my 
condition be such, that I need the last, yet I submit; for God 
did not send me into this world to do my own, but suffer his 
will, and I will obey it." Thus by a sublime depending on his 
wise, and powerful, and pitiful Creator, he did cheerfully sub- 
mit to what God had appointed, justifying the truth of that 
doctrine which he had preached. 

About this time that excellent book of The King's Meditations 
in his Solitude was printed and made public ; and Dr. Sanderson 
was such a lover of the author, and so desirous that the whole 
world should see the character of him in that book, and some- 
thing of the cause for which they suffered, that he designed to turn 
it into Latin: but when he had done half of it most excellently, his 
friend Dr. Earle prevented him, by appearing to have done the 
whole very well before him. 

About this time his dear and most intimate friend, the learned 
Dr. Hammond, came to enjoy a conversation and rest with him 
for some days; and did so. And having formerly persuaded him 
to trust his excellent memory, and not read, but try to speak a ser- 
mon as he had writ it. Dr. Sanderson became so compliant as 
to promise he would. And to that end they two went early the 
Sunday following to a neighbour minister, and requested to exchange 
a sermon ; and they did so. And at Dr. Sanderson's going into the 
pulpit, he gave his sermon — which was a very short one — into 
the hand of Dr. Hammond, intending to preach it as it was writ : 
but before he had preached a third part, Dr. Hammond — looking 
on his sermon as written — observed him to be out, and so lost 
as to the matter, that he also became afraid for him ; for 'twas dis- 
cernible to many of the plain auditory. But when he had ended 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 



159 



this short sermon, as they two walked homeward, Dr. Sanderson 
said with much earnestness, "Good Doctor, give me my sermon; 
and know that neither you nor any man living shall ever persuade 
me to preach again without my books." To which the reply was, 
''Good Doctor, be not angry: for if I ever persuade you to preach 
again without book, I will give you leave to burn all those that I am 
master of." 

Part of the occasion of Dr. Hammond's visit was at this time 
to discourse with Dr. Sanderson about some opinions, in which, 
if they did not then, they had doubtless differed formerly : it was 
about those knotty points, which are by the learned called the 
Quinquarticular Controversy; of which I shall proceed, not to 
give any judgment, — I pretend not to that, — but some short 
historical account which shall follow. 

There had been, since the unhappy Covenant was brought 
and so generally taken in England, a liberty given or taken by 
many preachers — those of London especially — to preach and 
be too positive in the points of Universal Redemption, Predestina- 
tion, and those others depending upon these. Some of which 
preached, "That all men were, before they came into this world, 
so predestinated to salvation or damnation, that it was not in their 
power to sin so, as to lose the first, nor by their most diligent en- 
deavour to avoid the latter. Others, that it was not so : because 
then God could not be said to grieve for the death of a sinner, 
when he himself had made him so by an inevitable decree, before he 
had so much as a being in this world;" affirming therefore, "that 
man ha4 some power left him to do the will of God, because he was 
advised to work out his salvation with fear and trembling;" 
maintaining, "that it is most certain every man can do what he 
can to be saved;" and that "he that does what he can to be 
saved, shall never be damned." And yet many that affirmed 
this would confess, "That that grace, which is but a persuasive 
offer, and left to us to receive, or refuse, is not that grace which 
shall bring men to heaven." Which truths, or untruths, or 
both, be they which they will, did upon these, or the like occasions, 
come to be searched into, and charitably debated betwixt Dr. San- 
derson, Dr. Hammond, and Dr. Pierce, the now Reverend Dean of 
Salisbury, — of which I shall proceed to give some account, but 
briefly. 



l6o IZAAK WALTON 

In the year 1648, the fifty- two London ministers — then a 
fraternity of Sion College in that city — had in a printed declara- 
tion aspersed Dr. Hammond most heinously, for that he had in his 
Practical Catechism affirmed, that our Saviour died for the sins of all 
mankind. To justify which truth, he presently makes a charitable 
reply — as 'tis now printed in his works. After which there were 
many letters passed betwixt the said Dr. Hammond, Dr. Sanderson, 
and Dr. Pierce, concerning God's grace and decrees. Dr. Sander- 
son was with much unwillingness drawn into this debate; for he 
declared it would prove uneasy to him, who in his judgment of God's 
decrees differed with Dr. Hammond, — whom he reverenced 
and loved dearly, — and would not therefore engage him into 
a controversy of which he could never hope to see an end : but they 
did all enter into a charitable disquisition of these said points in 
several letters, to the full satisfaction of the learned; those be- 
twixt Dr. Sanderson and Dr. Hammond being printed in his 
works; and for what passed betwixt him and the learned Dr. 
Pierce, I refer my reader to a letter annexed to the end of this 
relation. 

I think the judgment of Dr. Sanderson was, by these debates, 
altered from what it was at his entrance into them; for in the 
year 1632, when his excellent sermons were first printed in quarto, 
the reader may on the margin find some accusation of Arminius 
for false doctrine; and find that, upon a review and reprinting 
those sermons in folio, in the year 1657, that accusation of Ar- 
minius is omitted. And the change of his judgment seems more 
fully to appear in his said letter to Dr. Pierce. And let me. now tell 
the reader, which may seem to be perplexed with these several 
affirmations of God's decrees before mentioned, that Dr. Hammond, 
in a postscript to the last letter of Dr. Sanderson's, says, " God can 
reconcile his own contradictions, and therefore advises all men, as 
the apostle does, to study mortification, and be wise to sobriety." 
And let me add further, that if these fifty-two ministers of Sion 
College were the occasion of the debates in these letters, they 
have, I think, been the occasion of giving an end to the Quinquartic- 
ular Controversy: for none have since undertaken to say more; 
but seem to be so wise, as to be content to be ignorant of the rest, 
till they come to that place where the secrets of all hearts shall be 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON i6l 

laid open. And let me here tell the reader also, that if the rest of 
mankind would, as Dr. Sanderson, not conceal their alteration of 
judgment, but confess it to the honour of God, and themselves, 
then our nation would become freer from pertinacious disputes, 
and fuller of recantations. 

I cannot lead my reader to Dr. Hammond and Dr. Sanderson, 
where we left them at Boothby Pannell, till I have looked back 
to the Long Parliament, the Society of Covenanters in Sion College, 
and those others scattered up and down in London, and given some 
account of their proceedings and usage of the late learned Dr. Laud, 
then Archbishop of Canterbury. And though I will forbear to 
mention the injustice of his death, and the barbarous usage of 
him, both then and before it; yet my desire is that what follows 
may be noted, because it does now, or may hereafter, concern us ; 
namely, that in his last sad sermon on the scaffold at his death, he 
having freely pardoned all his enemies, and humbly begged 
of God to pardon them, and besought those present to pardon 
and pray for him; yet he seemed to accuse the magistrates of 
the city for suffering a sort of wretched people, that could not 
know why he was condemned, to go visibly up and down to gather 
hands to a petition, that the Parliament would hasten his execution. 
And having declared how unjustly he thought himseK to be con- 
demned, and accused for endeavouring to bring in Popery, — 
for that was one of the accusations for which he died, — he declared 
with sadness, " That the several sects and divisions then in England 
— which he had laboured to prevent — were like to bring the 
Pope a far greater harvest than he could ever have expected without 
them." And said, " These sects and divisions introduce profane- 
ness under the cloak of an imaginary religion; and that we have 
lost the substance of religion by changing it into opinion : and that 
by these means this Church, which all the Jesuits' machina- 
tions could not ruin, was fallen into apparent danger by those 
which were his accusers." To this purpose he spoke at his 
death: for this, and more of which, the reader may view his 
last sad sermon on the scaffold. And it is here mentioned, 
because his dear friend, Dr. Sanderson, seems to demonstrate 
the same in his two large and remarkable prefaces before his 
two volumes of sermons; and he seems also with much sorrow 

M 



l62 IZAAK WALTON 

to say the same again in his last will, made when he apprehended 
himself to be very near his death. And these Covenanters ought 
to take notice of it, and to remember that by the late wicked war 
begun by them, Dr. Sanderson was ejected out of the Professor's 
Chair in Oxford ; and that if he had continued in it — for he lived 
fourteen years after — both the learned of this and other nations 
had been made happy by many remarkable cases of conscience, so 
rationally stated, and so briefly, so clearly, and so convincingly 
determined, that posterity might have joyed and boasted that Dr. 
Sanderson was born in this nation, for the ease and benefit of all 
the learned that shall be born after him : but this benefit is so like 
time past, that they are both irrevocably lost. 

I should now return to Boothby Pannell, where we left Dr. 
Hammond and Dr. Sanderson together; but neither can be 
found there: for the first was in his journey to London, and 
the second seized upon the day after his friend's departure, and 
carried prisoner to Lincoln, then a garrison of the Parliament's. 
For the pretended reason of which commitment I shall give 
this following account. 

There was one Mr. Clarke, the minister of Alington, a town 
not many miles from Boothby Pannell, who was an active man 
for the Parliament and Covenant; one that, when Belvoir Castle — 
then a garrison for the Parliament — was taken by a party of the 
King's soldiers, was taken in it, and made a prisoner of war in 
Newark, then a garrison of the King's ; a man so active and useful 
for his party, that they became so much concerned for his enlarge- 
ment, that the Committee of Lincoln sent a troop of horse to seize 
and bring Dr. Sanderson a prisoner to that garrison : and they did 
so. And there he had the happiness to meet with many that knew 
him so well as to treat him kindly ; but told him, " He must con- 
tinue their prisoner, till he should purchase his own enlargement by 
procuring an exchange for Mr. Clarke, then prisoner in the King's 
garrison of Newark." There were many reasons given by the 
Doctor of the injustice of his imprisonment, and the inequality 
of the exchange: but all were ineffectual; for done it must be, 
or he continue a prisoner. And in time done it was, upon the 
following conditions. 

First, that Dr. Sanderson and Mr. Clarke, being exchanged^ 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 163 

should live undisturbed at their own parishes; and if either 
were injured by the soldiers of the contrary party, the other, 
having notice of it, should procure him a redress, by having 
satisfaction made for his loss, or for any other injury; or if not, 
he to be used in the same kind by the other party. Neverthe- 
less, Dr. Sanderson could neither live safe nor quietly, being 
several times plundered, and once wounded in three places: 
but he, apprehending the remedy might turn to a more intol- 
erable burden by impatience or complaining, forbore both; and 
possessed his soul in a contented quietness, without the least 
repining. But though he could not enjoy the safety he expected 
by this exchange, yet, by His providence that can bring good 
out of evil, it turned so much to his advantage, that whereas 
as his living had been sequestered from the year 1644, and con- 
tinued to be so till this time of his imprisonment, he, by the Articles 
of War in this exchange for Mr. Clarke, procured his sequestra- 
tion to be recalled, and by that means enjoyed a poor but contented 
subsistence for himself, wife, and children, till the happy restora- 
tion of our King and Church. 

In this time of his poor but contented privacy of life, his casuis- 
tical learning, peaceful moderation, and sincerity became so 
remarkable, that there were many that applied themselves to 
him for resolution in cases of conscience; some known to him, 
many not; some requiring satisfaction by conference, others by 
letters; so many, that his life became almost as restless as their 
minds; yet he denied no man: and if it be a truth which holy 
Mr. Herbert says, "That all worldly joys seem less, when com- 
pared with showing mercy or doing kindnesses," then doubtless 
Dr. Sanderson might have boasted for relieving so many restless 
and wounded consciences ; which, as Solomon says, " are a burden 
that none can bear, though their fortitude may sustain their other 
infirmities;" and if words cannot express the joy of a conscience 
relieved from such restless agonies; then Dr. Sanderson might 
rejoice that so many were by him so clearly and conscientiously 
satisfied, for he denied none, and would often praise God for that 
ability, and as often for the occasion, and that God had inclined 
his heart to do it to the meanest of any of those poor but precious 
souls, for which his Saviour vouchsafed to be crucified. 



164 IZAAK WALTON 

Some of these very many cases that were resolved by letters 
have been preserved and printed for the benefit of posterity, as 
namely — 

1. Of the Sabbath. 

2. Marrying with a Recusant. 

3. Of Unlawful Love. 

4. Of a Military Life. 

5. Of Scandal. 

6. Of a Bond taken in the King's Name. 

7. Of the Engagement. 

8. Of a Rash Vow. 

But many more remain in private hands, of which one is of 
Simony; and I wish the world might see it, that it might un- 
deceive some patrons, who think they have discharged that 
great and dangerous trust, both to God and man, if they take 
no money for a living, though it may be parted with for other 
ends less justifiable. 

And in this time of his retirement, when the common people 
were amazed and grown giddy by the many falsehoods and 
missapplications of truths frequently vented in sermons; when 
they wrested the Scripture by challenging God to be of their 
party, and called upon him in their prayers to patronise their 
sacrilege and zealous frenzies ; in this time he did so compassion- 
ate the generality of this misled nation, that though the times 
threatened danger, yet he then hazarded his safety by writing the 
large and bold preface, now extant, before his last twenty sermons 

— first printed in the year 1655 — in which there was such strength 
of reason, with so powerful and clear convincing applications made 
to the Nonconformists, as being read by one of those dissenting 
brethren, who was possessed with such a spirit of contradiction, 
as being neither able to defend his error, nor yield to truth manifest, 

— his conscience having slept long and quietly in a good seques- 
tered living, — was yet at the reading of it so awakened, that after 
a conflict with the reason he had met, and the damage he was to 
sustain if he consented to it, — and being still unwilling to be so 
convinced, as to lose by being over-reasoned, — he went in haste to 
the bookseller of whom it was bought, threatened him, and told 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 165 

him in anger, ''he had sold a book in which there was false divinity ; 
and that the preface had upbraided the Parliament, and many 
godly ministers of that party, for unjust dealing." To which his 
reply was, — 'twas Tim. Garthwaite, — "That 'twas not his 
trade to judge of true or false divinity, but to print and sell books : 
and yet if he, or any friend of his, would write an answer to it, and 
own it by setting his name to it, he would print the answer, and 
promote the selling of it." 

About the time of his printing this excellent preface, I met 
him accidentally in London, in sad-coloured clothes, and, God 
knows, far from being costly. The place of our meeting was 
near to Little Britain, where he had been to buy a book, which 
he then had in his hand. We had no inclination to part presently, 
and therefore turned to stand in a corner under a pent-house, — ■ 
for it began to rain, — and immediately the wind rose, and the 
rain increased so much, that both became so inconvenient, as to 
force us into a cleanly house, where we had bread, cheese, ale, 
and a fire for our money. This rain and wind were so obliging 
to me, as to force our stay there for at least an hour, to my great 
content and advantage, for in that time he made to me many useful 
observations, with much clearness and conscientious freedom. 
I shall relate a part of them, in hope they may also turn to the ad- 
vantage of my reader. He seemed to lament that the Parlia- 
ment had taken upon them to abolish our Liturgy, to the scandal 
of so many devout and learned men, and the disgrace of those 
many martyrs who had sealed the truth and use of it with their 
blood : and that no minister was now thought godly that did not 
decry it, and at least pretend to make better prayers ex tempore: 
and that they, and only they, that could do so prayed by the Spirit, 
and were godly; though in their sermons they disputed, and 
evidently contradicted each other in their prayers. And as he 
did disHke this, so he did most highly commend the Common 
Prayer of the Church, saying, ''the Collects were the most pas- 
sionate, proper, and most elegant expressions that any language 
ever afforded; and that there was in them such piety, and so in- 
terwoven with instructions, that they taught us to know the 
power, the wisdom, the majesty, and mercy of God, and much of 
our duty both to him and our neighbour : and that a congregation. 



l66 IZAAK WALTON 

behaving themselves reverently, and putting up to God these joint 
and known desires for pardon of sins, and praises for mercies re- 
ceived, could not but be more pleasing to God than those raw, un- 
premeditated expressions to which many of the hearers could not 
say, Amen." 

And he then commended to me the frequent use of the Psalter, 
or Psalms of David; speaking to this purpose: "That they were 
the treasury of Christian comfort, fitted for all persons and necessi- 
ties; able to raise the soul from dejection by the frequent mention 
of God's mercies to repentant sinners ; to stir up holy desires : to 
increase joy ; to moderate sorrow ; to nourish hope, and teach us 
patience, by waiting God's leisure: to beget a trust in the mercy, 
power, and providence of our Creator ; and to cause a resignation 
of ourselves to his will; and then, and not till then, to believe 
ourselves happy." This, he said, the Liturgy and Psalms taught 
us; and that by the frequent use of the last, they would not only 
prove to be our soul's comfort, but would become so habitual 
as to transform them into the image of his soul that composed them. 
After this manner he expressed himself concerning the Liturgy and 
Psalms; and seemed to lament that this, which was the devotion 
of the more primitive times, should in common pulpits be turned 
into needless debates about Freewill, Election, and Reprobation, 
of which, and many like questions, we may be safely ignorant, 
because Almighty God intends not to lead us to Heaven by hard 
questions, but by meekness and charity, and a frequent practice 
of devotion. 

And he seemed to lament very much that, by the means of 
irregular and indiscreet preaching, the generality of the nation 
were possessed with such dangerous mistakes, as to think "they 
might be religious first, and then just and merciful; that they 
might sell their consciences, and yet have something left that 
was worth keeping; that they might be sure they were elected, 
though their lives were visibly scandalous; that to be cunning 
was to be wise; that to be rich was to be happy, though their 
wealth was got without justice or mercy; that to be busy in 
things they understood not was no sin," These and the like 
mistakes he lamented much, and besought God to remove them, 
and restore us to that humility, sincerity, and single-hearted- 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 167 

ness with which this nation was blessed before the unhappy Cove- 
nant was brought into the nation, and every man preached and 
prayed what seemed best in his own eyes. And he then said to 
me, ''That the way to restore this nation to a more meek and 
Christian temper, was to have the body of divinity — or so much 
of it as was needful to be known — to be put into fifty-two homi- 
Hes or sermons, of such a length as not to exceed a third or fourth 
part of an hour's reading: and these needful points to be made 
so clear and plain, that those of a mean capacity might know 
what was necessary to be believed, and what God requires to be 
done; and then some applications of trials and conviction: and 
these to be read every Sunday of the year, as infallibly as the blood 
circulates the body; and then as certainly begun again, and con- 
tinued the year following: and that this being done, it might 
probably abate the inordinate desires of knowing what we need 
not, and practising what we know and ought to do." This was 
the earnest desire of this prudent man. And Oh that Dr. Sander- 
son had undertaken it ! for then in all probability it would have 
proved effectual. 

At this happy time of enjoying his company and his discourse, 
he expressed a sorrow by saying to me, ''Oh that I had gone 
chaplain to that excellently accomplished gentleman, your friend, 
Sir Henry Wotton ! ^ which was once intended, when he first 
went Ambassador to the State of Venice : for by that employment' 
I had been forced into a necessity of conversing, not with him 
only, but with several men of several nations ; and might thereby 
have kept myself from my unmanly bashfulness, which has proved 
very troublesome, and not less inconvenient to me; and which 
I now fear is become so habitual as never to leave me : and by 
that means I might also have known, or at least have had the 
satisfaction of seeing, one of the late miracles of general learning, 
prudence, and modesty, Sir Henry Wotton's dear friend, Padre 
Paulo,^ who, the author of his life says, was born with a bashful- 
ness as invincible as I have found my own to be : a man whose 
fame must never die, till virtue and learning shall become so 
useless as not to be regarded." 

^ Sir Henry Wotton, 1568-1639, English diplomatist and author. 

2pj.a Paolo Sarpi, 1552-1623, Venetian philosopher, historian, and patriot. 



l68 IZAAK WALTON 

This was a part of the benefit I then had by that hour's conver- 
sation: and I gladly remember and mention it as an argument 
of my happiness, and his great humihty and condescension. 
I had also a like advantage by another happy conference with 
him, which I am desirous to impart in this place to the reader. 
He lamented much that in many parishes, where the maintenance 
was not great, there was no minister to officiate ; and that many 
of the best sequestered Hvings were possessed with such rigid 
Covenanters as denied the Sacrament to their parishioners, unless 
upon such conditions and in such a manner as they could not 
take it. This he mentioned with much sorrow, saying, "The 
blessed Sacrament did, by way of preparation for it, give occasion 
to all conscientious receivers to examine the performance of their 
vows, since they received their last seal for the pardon of their 
sins past; and to examine and research their hearts, and make 
penitent reflections on their failings; and, that done, to bewail 
them, and then make new vows or resolutions to obey all God's 
commands, and beg his grace to perform them. And this done, 
the Sacrament repairs the decays of grace, helps us to conquer 
infirmities, gives us grace to beg God's grace, and then gives us 
what we beg; makes us still hunger and thirst after his righteous- 
ness, which we then receive, and being assisted with our endeav- 
ours, will still so dwell in us, as to become our satisfaction in this 
*life and our comfort on our last sick-beds." The want of this 
blessed benefit he lamented much, and pitied their condition 
that desired, but could not obtain it. 

I hope I shall not disoblige my reader, if I here enlarge into 
a further character of his person and temper. As first, that 
he was moderately tall : his behaviour had in it much of a plain 
comeliness, and very little, yet enough, of ceremony or court- 
ship; his looks and motion manifested affability and mildness, 
and yet he had with these a calm, but so matchless a fortitude, 
as secured him from complying with any of those many Parlia- 
ment injunctions that interfered with a doubtful conscience. 
His learning was methodical and exact, his wisdom useful, his 
integrity visible, and his whole life so unspotted that all ought 
to be preserved as copies for posterity to write after; the clergy 
especially, who with impure hands ought not to offer sacrifice to 
that God, whose pure eyes abhor iniquity. 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 169 

There was in his sermons no improper rhetoric, nor such 
perplexed divisions, as may be said to be Kke too much Hght, 
that so dazzles the eyes that the sight becomes less perfect: but 
there was therein no want of useful matter, nor waste of words ; 
and yet such clear distinctions as dispelled all confused notions, 
and made his hearers depart both wiser, and more confirmed 
in virtuous resolutions. 

His memory was so matchless and firm, as 'twas only over- 
come by his bashfulness; for he alone, or to a friend, could repeat 
all the Odes of Horace, all Tully's Offices, and much of Juvenal 
and Persius, without book: and would say, "the repetition of 
one of the Odes of Horace to himself was to him such music, 
as a lesson on the viol was to others, when they played it to them- 
selves or friends." And though he was blessed with a clearer 
judgment than other men, yet he was so distrustful of it, that 
he did over-consider of consequences, and would so delay and 
reconsider what to determine, that though none ever determined 
better, yet, when the bell tolled for him to appear and read his 
divinity lectures in Oxford, and all the scholars attended to hear 
him, he had not then, or not till then, resolved and writ what 
he meant to determine; so that that appeared to be a truth, 
which his old dear friend Dr. Sheldon would often say, namely, 
"That his judgment was so much superior to his fancy, that 
whatsoever this suggested, that disliked and controlled; still 
considering and re-considering, till his time was so wasted, 
that he was forced to write, not, probably, what was best, but 
what he thought last." And yet what he did then read appeared 
to all hearers to be so useful, clear, and satisfactory, as none 
ever determined with greater applause. These tiring and per- 
plexing thoughts begot in him an averseness to enter into the toil 
of considering and determining all casuistical points; because 
during that time, they neither gave rest to his body or mind. 
But though he would not be always loaden with these knotty 
points and distinctions; yet the study of old records, geneal- 
ogies, and heraldry were a recreation, and so pleasing, that he 
would say they gave rest to his mind. Of the last of which I 
have seen two remarkable volumes ; and the reader needs neither 
to doubt their truth or exactness. 



170 IZAAK WALTON 

And this humble man had so conquered all repining and am- 
bitious thoughts, and with them all other unruly passions, that 
if the accidents of the day proved to his danger or damage, yet 
he both began and ended it with an even and undisturbed quiet- 
ness; always praising God that he had not withdrawn food and 
raiment from him and his poor family ; nor suffered him to violate 
his conscience for his safety, or to support himself or them in a 
more splendid or plentiful condition ; and that he therefore resolved 
with David, ''That his praise should be always in his mouth." 

I have taken a content in giving my reader this character of 
his person, his temper, and some of the accidents of his life past ; 
and more might be added of all; but I will with great sorrow 
look forward to the sad days, in which so many good men suf- 
fered, about the year 1658, at which time Dr. Sanderson was 
in a very low condition as to his estate; and in that time Mr. 
Robert Boyle — a gentleman of a very noble birth, and more 
eminent for his liberality, learning, and virtue, and of whom I 
would say much more, but that he still lives — having casually 
met with and read his lectures de Juramento, to his great satis- 
faction, and being informed of Dr. Sanderson's great innocence 
and sincerity, and that he and his family were brought into a 
low condition by his not complying with the Parliament's in- 
junctions, sent him by his dear friend Dr. Barlow — the now 
learned Bishop of Lincoln — £50, and with it a request and 
promise. The request was, that he would review the Lectures 
de Conscientid, which he had read when he was Doctor of the 
Chair in Oxford, and print them for the good of posterity: — 
and this Dr. Sanderson did in the year 1659. And the promise 
was, that he would pay him that, or a greater sum if desired, 
during his life, to enable him to pay an amanuensis, to ease him 
from the trouble of writing what he should conceive or dictate. 
For the more particular account of which I refer my reader to 
a letter writ by the said Dr. Barlow, which I have annexed to 
the end of this relation. 

Towards the end of this year, 1659, when the many mixed 
sects, and their creators and merciless protectors, had led or 
driven each other into a whirlpool of confusion: when amaze- 
ment and fear had seized them, and their accusing consciences 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 171 

gave them an inward and fearful intelligence, that the god which 
they had long served was now ready to pay them such wages, 
as he does always reward witches with for their obeying him: 
when these wretches were come to foresee an end of their cruel 
reign, by our King's return; and such sufferers as Dr. San- 
derson — and with him many of the oppressed clergy and others 

— could foresee the cloud of their afHictions would be dispersed 
by it; then, in the beginning of the year following, the King 
was by God restored to us, and we to our known laws and liber- 
ties, and a general joy and peace seemed to breathe through 
the three nations. Then were the suffering clergy freed from 
their sequestration, restored to their revenues, and to a Hberty 
to adore, praise, and pray to God in such order as their con- 
sciences and oaths had formerly obliged them. And the reader 
will easily believe, that Dr. Sanderson and his dejected family 
rejoiced to see this day, and be of this number. 

It ought to be considered — which I have often heard or read 

— that in the primitive times men of learning and virtue were 
usually sought for, and solicited to accept of episcopal govern- 
ment, and often refused it. For they conscientiously considered 
that the office of a bishop was made up of labour and care ; that 
they were trusted to be God's almoners of the Church's revenue 
and double their care for the poor; to live strictly themselves, 
and use all diligence to see that their family, officers, and clergy 
did so; and that the account of that stewardship must, at the 
last dreadful day, be made to the Searcher of all hearts: and 
that in the primitive times they were therefore timorous to under- 
take it. It may not be said that Dr. Sanderson was accomplished 
with these, and all the other requisites required in a bishop, so 
as to be able to answer them exactly; but it may be affirmed, 
as a good preparation, that he had at the age of seventy-three 
years — for he was so old at the King's return — fewer faults 
to be pardoned by God or man, than are apparent in others in 
these days, in which God knows, we fall so short of that visible 
sanctity and zeal to God's glory, which was apparent in the days 
of primitive Christianity. This is mentioned by way of prepa- 
ration to what I shall say more of Dr. Sanderson; namely, 
that, at the King's return. Dr. Sheldon, the late prudent Bishop 



172 



IZAAK WALTON 



of Canterbury, — than whom none knew, valued, or loved Dr. 
Sanderson, more or better, — was by his Majesty made a chief 
trustee to commend to him fit men to supply the then vacant 
bishoprics. And Dr. Sheldon knew none fitter than Dr. San- 
derson, and therefore humbly desired the King that he would 
nominate him: and, that done, he did as humbly desire Dr. 
Sanderson that he would, for God's and the Church's sake, take 
that charge and care upon him. Dr. Sanderson had, if not an 
unwilHngness, certainly no forwardness to undertake it; and would 
often say, he had not led himself, but his friend would now lead 
him into a temptation, which he had daily prayed against; and 
besought God, if he did undertake it, so to assist him with his grace, 
that the example of his life, his cares and endeavours, might 
promote his glory, and help forward the salvation of others. 

This I have mentioned as a happy preparation to his bish- 
opric; and am next to tell, that he was consecrated Bishop of 
Lincoln at Westminster, the 28th of October, 1660. 

There was about this time a Christian care taken, that those 
whose consciences were, as they said, tender, and could not 
comply with the service and ceremonies of the Church, might 
have satisfaction given by a friendly debate betwixt a select 
number of them, and some like number of those that had been 
sufferers for the Church service and ceremonies, and now restored 
to liberty; of which last some were then preferred to power and 
dignity in the Church. And of these Bishop Sanderson was 
one, and then chose to be a moderator in that debate: and he 
performed his trust with much mildness, patience, and reason; 
but all proved ineffectual; for there be some prepossessions 
like jealousies, which, though causeless, yet cannot be removed 
by reasons as apparent as demonstration can make any truth. 
The place appointed for this debate was the Savoy in the Strand : 
and the points debated were, I think, many; some affirmed 
to be truth and reason, some denied to be either; and these 
debates being then in words, proved to be so loose and perplexed 
as satisfied neither party. For some time that which had been 
affirmed was immediately forgot or denied, and so no satisfac- 
tion given to either party. But that the debate might become 
more useful, it was therefore resolved that the day following the 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 173 

desires and reasons of the Nonconformists should be given in 
writing, and they in writing receive answers from the conform- 
ing party. And though I neither now can nor need to mention 
all the points debated, nor the names of the dissenting brethren; 
yet I am sure Mr. Baxter ^ was one, and am sure what shall now 
follow was one of the points debated. 

Concerning a command of lawful superiors, what was sufficient 
to its being a lawful command; this proposition was brought 
by the conforming party. 

"That command which commands an act in itself lawful, and 
no other act or circumstance unlawful, is not sinful. " 

Mr. Baxter denied it for two reasons, which he gave in with 
his own hand in writing, thus: 

One was, "Because that may be a sin per accidens, which is 
not so in itself, and may be unlawfully commanded, though that 
accident be not in the command." Another was, "That it may 
be commanded under an unjust penalty." 

Again, this proposition being brought by the Conformists, 
"That command which commandeth an act in itself lawful, 
and no other act whereby any unjust penalty is enjoined, nor 
any circumstance whence, per accidens, any sin is consequent 
which the commander ought to provide against, is not sinful." 

Mr. Baxter denied it for this reason, then given in with his 
own hand in writing thus: "Because the first act commanded 
may be per accidens unlawful, and be commanded by an unjust 
penalty, though no other act or circumstance commanded be such." 

Again, this proposition being brought by the Conformists, 
"That command which commandeth an act in itself lawful, and 
no other act whereby any unjust penalty is enjoined, nor any 
circumstance, whence directly, or per accidens, any sin is con- 
sequent, which the commander ought to provide against, hath 
in it all things requisite to the lawfulness of a command, and 
particularly cannot be guilty of commanding an act per accidens 
unlawful, nor of commanding an act under an unjust penalty." 

Mr. Baxter denied it upon the same reasons. 

Peter Gunning. 
John Pearson. 

» Richard Baxter, 1615-1691, author of The Saints' Everlasting Rest. 



174 IZAAK WALTON 

These were then two of the disputants, still alive, and will 
attest this; one being now Lord Bishop of Ely, and the other 
of Chester. And the last of them told me very lately, that one 
of the Dissenters — which I could but forbear to name — ap- 
peared to Dr. Sanderson to be so bold, so troublesome, and so 
illogical in the dispute, as forced patient Dr. Sanderson — who 
was then Bishop of Lincoln, and a moderator with other bishops 
— to say, with an unusual earnestness, " That he had never 
met with a man of more pertinacious confidence, and less abili- 
ties, in all his conversation." 

But though this debate at the Savoy was ended without any 
great satisfaction to either party, yet both parties knew the de- 
sires, and understood the abilities, of the other, much better 
than before it: and the late distressed clergy, that were now 
restored to their former rights and power, did, at the next meet- 
ing in Convocation, contrive to give the dissenting party satis- 
faction by alteration, explanation, and addition to some part 
both of the Rubric and Common Prayer, as also by adding some 
necessary Collects, and a particular Collect of Thanksgiving. How 
many of those new Collects were worded by Dr. Sanderson, I 
cannot say; but am sure the whole Convocation valued him so 
much that he never undertook to speak to any point in ques- 
tion, but he was heard with great willingness and attention; and 
when any point in question was determined, the Convocation 
did usually desire him to word their intentions, and as usually 
approve and thank him. 

At this Convocation the Common Prayer was made more com- 
plete, by adding three new necessary Offices; which were, "A 
Form of Humiliation for the Murder of King Charles the Martyr; 
A Thanksgiving for the Restoration of his Son our King; and 
For the Baptising of Persons of riper Age." I cannot say Dr. 
Sanderson did form, or word them all, but doubtless more than 
any single man of the Convocation; and he did also, by desire 
of the Convocation, alter and add to the forms of prayers to be 
used at sea — now taken into the service-book. And it may be 
noted, that William, the now Right Reverend Bishop of Canter- 
bury, was in these employments diligently useful; especially 
in helping to rectify the Calendar and Rubric. And lastly, it may 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 175 

be noted, that, for the satisfying all the dissenting brethren and 
others, the Convocation's reasons for the alterations and additions 
to the Liturgy were by them desired to be drawn up by Dr. San- 
derson; which being done by him, and approved by them^ was 
appointed to be printed before the Liturgy, and may be known 
by this title, "The Preface;" and begins thus — "It hath been 
the wisdom of the Church." 

I shall now follow him to his bishopric, and declare a part 
of his behaviour in that busy and weighty employment. And 
first, that it was with such condescension and obligingness to 
the meanest of his clergy, as to know and be known to them. 
And indeed he practised the like to all men of what degree soever, 
especially to his old neighbours or parishioners of Boothby Pan- 
nell; for there was all joy at his table, when they came to visit 
him: then they prayed for him, and he for them, with an un- 
feigned affection. 

I think it will not be denied but that the care and toil required 
of a bishop may justly challenge the riches and revenue with 
which their predecessors had lawfully endowed them : and yet he 
sought not that so much, as doing good both to the present age and 
posterity ; and he made this appear by what follows. 

The Bishop's chief house at Buckden, in the county of Hunt- 
ingdon, the usual residence of his predecessors, — for it stands about 
the midst of his diocese, — having been at his consecration a great 
part of it demolished, and what was left standing under a visible 
decay, was by him undertaken to be erected and repaired : and it 
was performed with great speed, care, and charge. And to this 
may be added, that the King having by an injunction commended 
to the care of the bishops, deans, and prebends of all Cathedral 
Churches, "the repair of them, their houses, and augmentation of 
small vicarages;" he, when he was repairing Buckden, did also 
augment the last, as fast as fines were paid for renewing leases : so 
fast, that a friend, taking notice of his bounty, was so bold as to 
advise him to remember "he was under his first-fruits, and that he 
was old, and had a wife and children yet but meanly provided for, 
especially if his dignity were considered. " To whom he made a 
mild and thankful answer, saying, " It would not become a Chris- 
tian bishop to suffer those houses built by his predecessors to be 



176 IZAAK WALTON 

ruined for want of repair; and less justifiable to suffer any of those, 
that were called to so high a calling as to sacrifice at God's altar, 
to eat the bread of sorrow constantly, when he had a power by a 
smajl augmentation, to turn it into the bread of cheerfulness : and 
wished, that as this was, so it were also in his power to make all 
mankind happy, for he desired nothing more. And for his wife 
and children, he hoped to leave them a competence, and in the 
hands of a God that would provide for all that kept innocence, and 
trusted His providence and protection, which he had always found 
enough to make and keep him happy. " 

There was in his diocese a minister of almost his age, that had 
been of Lincoln College when he left it, who visited him often, and 
always welcome, because he was a man of innocence and openheart- 
edness. This minister asked the Bishop what books he studied 
most, when he laid the foundation of his great and clear learning. 
To which his answer was, "that he declined reading many; 
but what he did read were well chosen, and read so often, that he 
became very familiar with them;" and said, "they were chiefly 
three, Aristotle's Rhetoric, Aquinas's Secunda Secundce, and TuUy, 
but chiefly his Offices, which he had not read over less than twenty 
times, and could at this age say without book. " And told him also, 
"the learned civiHan Doctor Zouch — who died lately — had writ 
Elementa Juris prudentm, which was a book that he could also say 
without book; and that no wise man could read it too often, or 
love or commend too much;" and told him "these had been his 
toil ; but for himself he always had a natural love to genealogies and 
heraldry; and that when his thoughts were harassed with any 
perplexed studies, he left off, and turned to them as a recreation ; 
and that his very recreation had made him so perfect in them, 
that he couM, in a very short time, give an account of the descent, 
arms, and antiquity of any family of the nobility or gentry of this 
nation. " 

Before I give an account of Dr. Sanderson's last sickness, I desire 
to tell the reader that he was of a healthful constitution, cheerful 
and mild, of an even temper, very moderate in his diet, and had 
had little sickness, till some few years before his death; but was 
then every winter punished with a diarrhoea, which left not till 
warm weather returned and removed it: and this distemper did. 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 177 

as he grew older, seize him oftener, and continue longer with him. 
But though it weakened him, yet it made him rather indis- 
posed than sick, and did no way disable him from studying — 
indeed too much. In this decay of his strength, but not of his 
memory or reason, — for this distemper works not upon the under- 
standing, — he made his last will, of which I shall give some 
account for confirmation of what hath been said, and what I think 
convenient to be known, before I declare his death and burial. 

He did in his last will give an account of his faith and persuasion 
in point of religion, and Church government, in these very words : 

"I, Robert Sanderson, Doctor of Divinity, an unworthy Minister 
of Jesus Christ, and, by the providence of God, Bishop of Lincoln, 
being by the long continuance of an habitual distemper brought to 
a great bodily weakness and faintness of spirits, but — by the great 
mercy of God — without any bodily pain otherwise, or decay of 
understanding, do make this my Will and Testament, — written all 
with my own hand, — revoking all former Wills by me heretofore 
made, if any such shall be found. First, I commend my soul into 
the hands of Almighty God, as of a faithful Creator, which I humbly 
beseech him mercifully to accept, looking upon it, not as it is in itself 
— infinitely polluted with sin, — but as it is redeemed and purged 
with precious blood of his only beloved Son, and my most sweet 
Saviour Jesus Christ; in confidence of whose merits and medita- 
tion alone it is, that I cast myself upon the mercy of God for the 
pardon of my sins, and the hopes of eternal life. And here I do 
profess, that as I have lived, so I desire, and — by the grace of God 
— resolve, to die in the communion of the Catholic Church of Christ, 
and a true son of the Church of England : which, as it stands by law 
established, to be both in doctrine and worship agreeable to the 
word of God, and in the most, and most material points of both 
conformable to the faith and practice of the godly Churches of 
Christ in the primitive and purer times, I do firmly believe : led so 
to do, not so much from the force of custom and education, — to 
which the greatest part of mankind owe their particular different 
persuasions in point of religion, — as upon the clear evidence of 
truth and reason, after a serious and impartial examination of the 
grounds, as well of Popery as Puritanism, according to that meas- 
ure of understanding, and those opportunities which God hath 



178^ 



IZAAK WALTON 



afforded me : and herein I am abundantly satisfied, that the schism 
which the Papists on the one hand, and the superstition which the 
Puritan on the other hand, lay to our charge, are very justly charge- 
able upon themselves respectively. Wherefore I humbly beseech 
Almighty God, the Father of mercies, to preserve the Church 
by his power and providence, in peace, truth, and godliness, ever- 
more to the world 's end : which doubtless he will do, if the wicked- 
ness and security of a sinful people — and particularly those sins 
that are so rife, and seem daily to increase among us, of un- 
thankfulness, riot, and sacrilege — do not tempt his patience to the 
contrary. And I also further humbly beseech him, that it would 
please him to give unto our gracious Sovereign, the reverend bish- 
ops, and the Parliament, timely to consider the great danger that 
visibly threatens this Church in point of religion by the late great 
increase of Popery, and in point of revenue by sacrilegious inclos- 
ures; and to provide such wholesome and effectual remedies, as 
may prevent the same before it be too late." 

And for a further manifestation of his humble thoughts and 
desires, they may appear to the reader by another part of his will 
which follows. 

"As for my corruptible body, I bequeath it to the earth whence 
it was taken, to be decently buried in the Parish Church of Buckden, 
towards the upper end of the chancel, upon the second, or — at 
the furthest — the third day after my decease ; and that with as 
little noise, pomp, and charge as may be, without the invitation 
of any person how near soever related unto me, other than 
the inhabitants of Buckden; without the unnecessary expense 
of escutcheons, gloves, ribbons, etc., and without any blacks 
to be hung anywhere in or about the house or Church, other 
than a pulpit cloth, a hearse cloth, and a mourning gown for 
the preacher; whereof the former — after my body shall be 
interred — to be given to the preacher of the funeral sermon, and 
the latter to the curate of the parish for the time being. And 
my will further is that the funeral sermon be preached by my 
own household chaplain, containing some wholesome discourse 
concerning Mortality, the Resurrection of the Dead and the Last 
Judgment; and that he shall have for his pains ;^5, upon con- 
dition that he speak nothing at all concerning my person, either 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON 



179 



good or ill, other than I myself shall direct ; only signifying to the 
auditory that it was my express will to have it so. And it is my 
will, that no costly monument be erected for my memory, but only 
a fair flat marble stone to be laid over me, with this incription in 
legible Roman characters, depositum roberti Sanderson nu- 

PER LINCOLNIENSIS EPISCOPI, qui OBIIT anno DOMINI MDCLXII. 
ET ^TATIS SUiE SEPTUAGESIMO SEXTO, HIC REQUIESCIT IN 

spe beate resurrectionis. This manner of burial, although 
I cannot but foresee it will prove unsatisfactory to sundry my 
nearest friends and relations, and be apt to be censured by others, 
as an evidence of my too much parsimony and narrowness of mind, 
as being altogether unusual, and not according to the mode of 
these times: yet it is agreeable to the sense of my heart, and I do 
very much desire my will may be carefully observed herein, hoping 
it may become exemplary to some or other : at least however testifying 
at my death — what I have so often and earnestly professed in my 
lifetime — my utter dislike of the flatteries commonly used in 
funeral sermons, and of the vast expenses otherwise laid out in 
funeral solemnities and entertainments, with very little benefit to 
any; which if bestowed in pious and charitable works, might 
redound to the public or private benefit of many persons." 

I am next to tell, that he died the 29th of January, 1662;^ and 
that his body was buried in Buckden, the third day after his 
death ; and for the manner, that it was as far from ostentation as he 
desired it ; and all the rest of his will was as punctually performed. 
And when I have — to his just praise — told this truth, " that he 
died far from being rich," I shall return back to visit, and give a 
further account of him on his last sick-bed. 

His last will — of which I have mentioned a part — was made 
about three weeks before his death, about which time, finding his 
strength to decay, by reason of his constant infirmity, and a con- 
sumptive cough added to it, he retired to his chamber, expressing 
a desire to enjoy his last thoughts to himself in private, without dis- 
turbance or care, especially of what might concern this world. And 
that none of his clergy — which are more numerous than any other 
bishop's — might suffer by his retirement, he did by commission 
empower his chaplain, Mr. Pullin, with episcopal power to give 

^ Should be 1663. 



l8o IZAAK WALTON 

institutions to all livings or Church preferments, during this his 
disability to do it himself. In this time of his retirement he longed 
for his dissolution ; and when some that loved him prayed for his 
recovery, if he at any time found any amendment, he seemed to be 
displeased, by saying, " His friends said their prayers backward for 
him : and that it was not his desire to live a useless Kf e, and by fill- 
ing up a place keep another out of it, that might do God and his 
Church service." He would often with much joy and thankful- 
ness mention, "That during his being a housekeeper — which 
was more than forty years — there had not been one buried out 
of his family, and that he was now like to be the first." He 
would also often mention with thankfulness, "That till he was 
threescore years of age, he had never spent five shillings in law, 
nor — upon himself — so much in wine : and rejoiced much that 
he had so lived as never to cause an hour's sorrow to his good 
father; and hoped he should die without an enemy. " 

He, in his retirement, had the Church prayers read in his 
chamber twice every day; and at nine at night, some prayers 
read to him and a part of his family out of The Whole Duty of Man. 
As he was remarkably punctual and regular in all his studies 
and actions, so he used himself to be for his meals. And his dinner 
being appointed to be constantly ready at the ending of prayers, 
and he expecting and calling for it, was answered, " It would be 
ready in a quarter of an hour." To which his reply was, '^ A 
quarter of an hour! Is a quarter of an hour nothing to a 
man that probably has not many hours to live?" And though 
he did live many hours after this, yet he lived not many days ; for 
the day after — which was three days before his death — he was 
become so weak and weary of either motion or sitting, that he was 
content, or forced, to keep his bed : in which I desire he may rest, 
till I have given some account of his behaviour there and imme- 
diately before it. 

The day before he took his bed, — which was three days before 
his death, — he, that he might receive a new assurance for the 
pardon of his sins past, and be strengthened in his way to the New 
Jerusalem, took the blessed Sacrament of the Body and Blood of his 
and our blessed Jesus, from the hands of his chaplain, Mr. Pullin, 
accompanied with his wife, children, and a friend, in as awful, 



THE LIFE OF DR. ROBERT SANDERSON iSl 

humble, and ardent a manner as outward reverence could express. 
After the praise and thanksgiving for it was ended, he spake to 
this purpose : " Thou, O God ! tookest me out of my mother's 
womb, and hast been the powerful protector of me to this present 
moment of my Hfe: Thou hast neither forsaken me now I am 
become grey-headed, nor suffered me to forsake thee in the late 
days of temptation, and sacrifice my conscience for the preservation 
of my liberty or estate. It was by grace that I have stood, when 
others have fallen under my trials: and these mercies I now re- 
member with joy and thankfulness; and my hope and desire is, 
that I may die praising thee." 

The frequent repetition of the Psalms of David hath been 
noted to a great part of the devotion of the primitive Christians; 
the Psalms having in them not only prayers and holy instructions, 
but such commemorations of God's mercies as may preserve, 
comfort, and confirm our dependence on the power, and providence, 
and mercy of our Creator. And this is mentioned in order to 
telling, that as the holy Psalmist said, that his eyes should prevent 
both the dawning of the day and night watches, by meditating on 
God's word (Psal. cxix. 147), so it was Dr. Sanderson's constant 
practice every morning to entertain his first waking thoughts with 
a repetition of those very psalms that the Church hath appointed to 
be constantly read in the daily morning service: and having at 
night laid him in his bed, he as constantly closed his eyes with a 
repetition of those appointed for the service of the evening, remem- 
bering and repeating the very Psalms appointed for every day ; and 
as the month had formerly ended and began again, so did this exer- 
cise of his devotion. And if his first waking thoughts were of the 
world, or what concerned it, he would arraign and condemn him- 
self for it. Thus he began that work on earth, which is now his 
employment in heaven. 

After his taking his bed, and about a day before his death, he 
desired his chaplain, Mr. Pullin, to give him absolution : and at his 
performing that office, he pulled off his cap, that Mr. Pullin 
might lay his hand upon his bare head. After this desire of his 
was satisfied, his body seemed to be at more ease, and his mind more 
cheerful; and he said, ''Lord, forsake me not now my strength 
faileth me; but continue thy mercy, and, let my mouth be filled 



1 82 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

with thy praise. " He continued the remaining night and day very 
patient, and thankful for any of the httle offices that were performed 
for his ease and refreshment : and during that time did often say the 
103rd Psalm to himself, and very often these words, "My heart is 
fixed, O God ! my heart is fixed where true joy is to be found. " 
His thoughts seemed now to be wholly of death, for which he was so 
prepared, that the King of Terrors could not surprise him as a thief 
in the night ; for he had often said, he was prepared, and longed for 
it. And as this desire seemed to come from heaven, so it left him 
not till his soul ascended to that region of blessed spirits, whose 
employments are to join in concert with him, and sing praise and 
glory to that God, who hath brought them to that place, into which 
sin and sorrow cannot enter. 

Thus this pattern of meekness and primitive innocence changed 
this for a better life. 'Tis now too late to wish that my life may be 
like his ; for I am in the eighty-fifth year of my age : but I humbly 
beseech Almighty God, that my death may: and do as earnestly 
beg of every reader, to say, — Amen. 

Blessed is the man in whose spirit there is no guile, Psal. xxxii. 2, 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 

THE LIFE OF POPE 

[From The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, 1779-1781. Cor- 
rected Edition, London, 1800. 

"His [Johnson's] knowledge of the Hterary history of England since the 
Restoration was unrivalled. That knowledge he had derived partly from 
books, and partly from sources which had long been closed; from old Grub 
Street traditions ; from the talk of forgotten poetasters and pamphleteers 
who had long been lying in parish vaults ; from the recollections of such men 
as Gilbert Walmesley, who had conversed with the wits of Button's; Gibber, 
who had mutilated the plays of two generation of dramatists; Orrery, who 
had been admitted to the society of Swift; and Savage, who had rendered 
services of no very honourable kind to Pope. The biographer therefore sate 
down to his task with a mind full of matter. He had at first intended to give 
only a paragraph to every minor poet, and only four or five pages to the great- 
est name. But the flood of anecdote and criticism overflowed the narrow 
channel. The work, which was originally meant to consist on ly of a few sheets, 
swelled into ten volumes, small volumes, it is true, and not closely printed. 
The first four appeared in 1779, the remaining six in 1781. 



THE LIFE OF POPE 1 83 

" The Lives of the Poets are, on the whole, the best of Johnson's works. 
The narratives are as entertaining as any novel. The remarks on Hfe and 
on human nature are eminently shrewd and profound. The criticisms are 
often excellent, and, even when grossly and provokingly unjust, well deserve 
to be studied. For, however erroneous they may be, they are never silly. 
They are the judgments of a mind trammelled by prejudice and deficient in 
sensibility, but vigorous and acute. They therefore generally contain a 
portion of valuable truth which deserves to be separated from the alloy ; and, 
at the very worst, they mean something, a praise to which much of what is 
called criticism in our time has no pretensions. 

" Savage's Life Johnson reprinted nearly as it had appeared in 1744. Who- 
ever, after reading that life, will turn to the other lives will be struck by the 
difference of style. Since Johnson had been at ease in his circumstances he 
had written little and had talked much. When, therefore, he, after the lapse 
of years, resumed his pen, the mannerism which he had contracted while he 
was in the constant habit of elaborate composition was less perceptible than 
formerly; and his diction frequently had a colloquial ease which it had 
formerly wanted." — Thomas Babington Macaulay, "The Life of 
Samuel Johnson," 1856, in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays.] 

Alexander Pope was born in London, May 22, 1688, of parents 
whose rank or station was never ascertained : we are informed 
that they were of gentle blood; that his father was of a family of 
which the Earl of Downe was the head, and that his mother was 
the daughter of William Turner, Esquire, of York, who had like- 
wise three sons, one of whom had the honour of being killed, and 
the other of dying, in the service of Charles the First; the third 
was fhade a general officer in Spain, from whom the sister inherited 
what sequestrations and forfeitures had left in the family. 

This, and this only, is told by Pope ; who is more willing, as I have 
heard observed, to shew what his father was not, than what he was. 
It is allowed that he grew rich by trade ; but whether in a shop or on 
the Exchange was never discovered, till Mr. Tyers told, on the 
authority of Mrs. Racket, that he was a linen-draper in the Strand. 
Both parents were papists. 

Pope was from his birth of a constitution tender and delicate; 
but is said to have shewn remarkable gentleness and sweetness of 
disposition. The weakness of his body continued through his life, 
but the mildness of his mind perhaps ended with his childhood. 
His voice, when he was young, was so pleasing, that he was called 
in fondness the little Nightingale. 

Being not sent early to school, he was taught to read by an aunt; 
and when he was seven or eight years old, became a lover of books. 



1 84 ' SAMUEL JOHNSON 

He first learned to write by imitating printed books; a species of 
penmanship in which he retained great excellence through his 
whole life, though his ordinary hand was not elegant. 

When he was about eight, he was placed in Hampshire under 
Taverner, a Romish priest, who, by a method very rarely practised, 
taught him the Greek and Latin rudiments together. He was now 
first regularly initiated in poetry by the persual of Ogylby's 
Homer, and Sandys's Ovid: Ogylby's assistance he never repaid 
with any praise; but of Sandys he declared, in his notes to the 
Iliad, that English poetry owed much of its present beauty to his 
translations. Sandys very rarely attempted original compositions. 

From the care of Taverner, under whom his proficiency was 
considerable, he was removed to a school at Twyford near Winches- 
ter, and again to another school about Hyde-park Corner; from 
which he used sometimes to stroll to the playhouse, and was so 
delighted with theatrical exhibitions, that he formed a kind of 
play from Ogylby's Iliad, with some verses of his own intermixed, 
which he persuaded his school-fellows to act, with the addition of 
his master's gardener, who personated Ajax. 

At the two last schools he used to represent himself as having 
lost part of what Taverner had taught him, and on his master at 
Twyford he had already exercised his poetry in a lampoon. 
Yet under those masters he translated more than a fourth plrt of 
the Metamorphoses. If he kept the same proportion in his other 
exercises, it cannot be thought that his loss was great. 

He tells of himself, in his poems, that he lisped in numbers; and 
used to say that he could not remember the time when he began 
to make verses. In the style of fiction it might have been said of 
him as of Pindar, that when he lay in his cradle, the bees swarmed 
about his mouth. 

About the time of the Revolution his father, who was un- 
doubtedly disappointed by the sudden blast of popish prosperity, 
quitted his trade, and retired to Binfield in Windsor Forest, with 
about twenty thousand pounds; for which, being conscientiously 
determined not to entrust it to the government, he found no better 
use than that of locking it up in a chest, and taking from it what 
his expenses required ; and his life was long enough to consume a 
great part of it, before his son came to the inheritance. 



THE LIFE OF POPE 1 85 

To Binfield Pope was called by his father when he was about 
twelve years old ; and there he had for a few months the assistance 
of one Deane, another priest, of whom he learned only to construe 
a little of Tully^s Offices. How Mr. Deane could spend, with a 
boy who had translated so much of Ovid, some months over a 
small part of Tully^s Offices, it is now vain to enquire. 

Of a youth so successfully employed, and so conspicuously 
improved, a minute account must be naturally desired ; but curios- 
ity must be contented with confused, imperfect, and sometimes 
improbable intelligence. Pope, finding little advantage from 
external help, resolved thenceforward to direct himself, and at 
twelve formed a plan of study which he completed with little other 
incitement than the desire of excellence. 

His primary and principal purpose was to be a poet, with which 
his father accidentally concurred, by proposing subjects, and oblig- 
ing him to correct his performances by many revisals ; after which 
the old gentleman, when he was satisfied, would say, these are 
good rhymes. 

In his perusal of the English poets he soon distinguished the 
versification of Dryden, which he considered as the model to be 
studied, and was impressed with such veneration for his instructor, 
that he persuaded some friends to take him to the coffee-house 
which Dryden frequented, and pleased himself with having seen him. 

Dryden died May i, 1701, some days before Pope was twelve; 
so early must he therefore have felt the power of harmony, and 
the zeal of genius. Who does not wish that Dryden could have 
known the value of the homage that was paid him, and foreseen 
the greatness of his young admirer ? 

The earliest of Pope's productions is his Ode on Solitude, written 
before he was twelve, in which there is nothing more than other 
forward boys have attained, and which is not equal to Cowley's 
performances at the same age. 

His time was now wholly spent in reading and writing. As he 
read the Classicks, he amused himself with translating them ; and 
at fourteen made a version of the first book of the Thebais, which, 
with some revision, he afterwards published. He must have been 
at this time, if he had no help, a considerable proficient in the 
Latin tongue. 



l86 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

By Dryden's Fables, which had then been not long published, 
and were much in the hands of poetical readers, he was tempted 
to try his own skill in giving Chaucer a more fashionable ap- 
pearance, and put January and May, and the Prologue of the Wife of 
Bath, into modern English. He translated likewise the Epistle 
of Sappho to Phaon from Ovid, to complete the version, which 
was before imperfect; and wrote some other small pieces, which 
he afterwards printed. 

He sometimes imitated the English poets, and professed to 
have written at fourteen his poem upon Silence, after Rochester's 
Nothing. He had now formed his versification, and in the smooth- 
ness of his numbers surpassed his original: but this is a small 
part of his praise ; he discovers such acquaintance both with human 
and publick affairs, as is not easily conceived to have been attain- 
able by a boy of fourteen in Windsor Forest. 

Next year he was desirous of opening to himself new sources of 
knowledge, by making himself acquainted with modern languages ; 
and removed for a time to London, that he might study French and 
Italian, which, as he desired nothing more than to read them, 
were by diligent application soon dispatched. Of Italian learning 
he does not appear to have ever made much use in his subsequent 
studies. 

He then returned to Binfield, and delighted himself with his 
own poetry. He tried all styles, and many subjects. He wrote a 
comedy, a tragedy, an epick poem, with panegyricks on all the 
princes of Europe; and, as he confesses, thought himself the 
greatest genius that ever was. Self-confidence is the first requisite 
to great undertakings; he, indeed, who forms his opinion of him- 
self in solitude, without knowing the powers of other men, is very 
liable to errour ; but it was the felicity of Pope to rate himself at 
his real value. 

Most of his puerile productions were, by his maturer judgment, 
afterwards destroyed; Alcander, the epick poem, was burned by 
the persuasion of Atterbury. The tragedy was founded on the 
legend of St. Genevieve. Of the comedy there is no account. 

Concerning his studies it is related, that he translated Tully on 
Old Age; and that, besides his books of poetry and criticism, he 
read Templets Essays and Locke on Human Understanding. His 



THE LIFE OF POPE 1 87 

reading, though his favourite authors are not known, appears to 
have been sufficiently extensive and multifarious; for his early- 
pieces shew, with sufficient evidence, his knowledge of books. 

He that is pleased with himself, easily imagines that he shall 
please others. Sir William Trumbal, who had been ambassador 
at Constantinople, and secretary of state, when he retired from 
business, fixed his residence in the neighbourhood of Binfield. 
Pope, not yet sixteen, was introduced to the statesman of sixty, 
and so distinguished himself, that their interviews ended in friend- 
ship and correspondence. Pope was, through his whole life, am- 
bitious of splendid acquaintance, aifd he seems to have wanted 
neither diligence nor success in attracting the notice of the great; 
for from his first entrance into the world, and his entrance was 
very early, he was admitted to familiarity with those whose rank 
or station made them most conspicuous. 

From the age of sixteen the life of Pope, as an author, may be 
properly computed. He now wrote his Pastorals, which were 
shewn to the Poets and Criticks of that time; as they well deserved, 
they were read with admiration, and many praises were bestowed 
upon them and upon the Preface, which is both elegant and learned 
in a high degree : they were, however, not published till five years 
afterwards. 

Cowley, Milton, and Pope, are distinguished among the English 
Poets by the early exertion of their powers ; but the works of Cow- 
ley alone were published in his childhood, and therefore of him 
only can it be certain that his puerile performances received no 
improvement from his maturer studies. 

At this time began his acquaintance with Wycherley, a man who 
seems to have had among his contemporaries his full share of 
reputation, to have been esteemed without virtue, and caressed 
without good-humour. Pope was proud of his notice; Wycherley 
wrote verses in his praise, which he was charged by Dennis with 
writing to himself, and they agreed for a while to flatter one another. 
It is pleasant to remark how soon Pope learned the cant of an 
author, and began to treat criticks with contempt, though he had 
yet suffered nothing from them. 

But the fondness of Wycherley was too violent to last. His 
esteem of Pope was such, that he submitted some poems to his 



l88 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

revision ; and when Pope, perhaps proud of such confidence, was 
sufficiently bold in his criticisms, and liberal in his alterations, 
the old scribbler was angry to see his pages defaced, and felt more 
pain from the detection than content from the amendment of 
his faults. They parted; but Pope always considered him with 
kindness, and visited him a little time before he died. 

Another of his early correspondents was Mr. Cromwell, of whom 
I have learned nothing particular but that he used to ride a-hunting 
in a tye-wig. He was fond, and perhaps vain, of amusing himself 
with poetry and criticism; and sometimes sent his performances 
to Pope, who did not forbear such remarks as were now and then 
unwelcome. Pope, in his turn, put the juvenile version of Statins 
into his hands for correction. 

Their correspondence afforded the publick its first knowledge 
of Pope's epistolary powers ; for his Letters were given by Cromwell 
to one Mrs. Thomas, and she many years afterwards sold them to 
Curll, who inserted them in a volume of his Miscellanies. 

Walsh, a name yet preserved among the minor poets, was one 
of his first encouragers. His regard was gained by the Pastorals, 
and from him Pope received the counsel by which he seems to have 
regulated his studies. Walsh advised him to correctness, which, 
as he told him, the English poets had hitherto neglected, and which 
therefore was left to him as a basis of fame ; and, being delighted 
with rural poems, recommended to him to write a pastoral comedy, 
like those which are read so eagerly in Italy ; a design which Pope 
probably did not approve, as he did not follow it. 

Pope had now declared himself a poet; and, thinking himself 
entitled to poetical conversation, began at seventeen to frequent 
Will's, a coffee-house on the north side of Russell-street in Covent- 
garden, where' the wits of that time used to assemble, and where 
Dryden had, when he lived, been accustomed to preside. 

During this period of his life he was indefatigably diligent, and 
insatiably curious; wanting health for violent, and money for 
expensive pleasures, and having certainly excited in himself very 
strong desires of intellectual eminence, he spent much of his time 
over his books; but he read only to store his mind with facts 
and images, seizing all that his authors presented with undistin- 
guishing voracity, and with an appetite for knowledge too eager to 



THE LIFE OF POPE 1 89 

be nice. — In a mind like his, however, all the faculties were at once 
involuntarily improving. Judgement is forced upon us by experi- 
ence. He that reads many books must compare one opinion or 
one style with another; and when he compares, must necessarily 
distinguish, reject, and prefer. But the account given by himself 
of his studies was, that from fourteen to twenty he read only for 
amusement, from twenty to twenty-seven for improvement and 
instruction; that in the first part of this time he desired only to 
know, and in the second he endeavoured to judge. 

The Pastorals, which had been for some time handed about 
among poets and criticks, were at last printed (1709) in Tonson's 
Miscellany, in a volume which began with the Pastorals of Philips, 
and ended with those of Pope. 

The same year was written the Essay on Criticism; a work which 
displays such extent of comprehension, such nicety of distinction, 
such acquaintance with mankind, and such knowledge both of 
ancient and modern learning, as are not often attained by the 
maturest age and longest experience. It was published about two 
years afterwards, and being praised by Addison in the Spectator 
with sufl&cient liberality, met with so much favor as enraged Dennis, 
'who,' he says, 'found himself attacked without any manner of 
provocation on his side, and attacked in his person, instead of his 
writings, by one who was wholly a stranger to him, at a time when 
all the world knew he was persecuted by fortune ; and not only saw 
that this was attempted in a clandestine manner, with the utmost 
falsehood and calumny, but found that all this was done by a little 
affected hypocrite, who had nothing in his mouth at the same time 
but truth, candour, friendship, good-nature, humanity, and mag- 
nanimity.' 

How the attack was clandestine is not easily perceived, nor how 
his person is depreciated ; but he seems to have known something 
of Pope's character, in whom may be discovered an appetite to talk 
too frequently of his own virtues. 

The pamphlet is such as rage might be expected to dictate. 
He supposes himself to be asked two questions ; whether the Essay 
will succeed, and who or what is the author. 

Its success he admits to be secured by the false opinions then 
prevalent ; the author he concludes to be young and raw. 



I go SAMUEL JOHNSON 

' First, because he discovers a sufficiency beyond his little ability, 
and hath rashly undertaken a task infinitely above his force. 
Secondly, while this little author struts, and affects the dictatorian 
air, he plainly shews that at the same time he is under the rod ; and 
while he pretends to give law to others, is a pedantick slave to 
authority and opinion. Thirdly, he hath, like schoolboys, bor- 
rowed both from living and dead. Fourthly, he knows not his 
own mind, and frequently contradicts himself. Fifthly, he is al- 
most perpetually in the wrong.' 

All these positions he attempts to prove by quotations and re- 
marks; but his desire to do mischief is greater than his power. 
He has, however, justly criticised some passages : in these lines. 

There are whom heaven has bless'd with store of wit, 
Yet want as much again to manage it; 
For wit and judgement ever are at strife — 

it is apparent that wit has two meanings, and that what is wanted, 
though called wit, is truly judgement. So far Dennis is undoubtedly 
right; but, not content with argument, he will have a little mirth, 
and triumphs over the first couplet in terms too elegant to be 
forgotten. ' By the way, what rare numbers are here ! Would 
not one swear that this youngster had espoused some antiquated 
Muse, who had sued out a divorce on account of impotence from 
some superannuated sinner; and, having been p^-xed by her 
former spouse, has got the gout in her decrepit age, which makes 
her hobble so damnably.' This was the man who would reform 
a nation sinking into barbarity. 

In another place Pope himself allowed that Dennis had detected 
one of those blunders which are called bulls. The first edition had 
this line : 

What is this wit — 

Where wanted, scorn'd ; and envied where acquir'd ? 

'How,' says the critick, 'can wit be scorned where it is not? Is 
not this a figure frequently employed in Hibernian land? The 
person that wants this wit may indeed be scorned, but the scorn 
shews the honour which the contemner has for wit.' Of this re- 
mark Pope made the proper use, by correcting the passage. 



THE LIFE OF POPE 



191 



I have preserved, I think, all that is reasonable in Dennis's 
criticism; it remains that justice be done to his delicacy. 'For 
his acquaintance (says Dennis) he names Mr. Walsh, who had by 
no means the qualification which this author reckons absolutely 
necessary to a critick, it being very certain that he was, like 
this Essayer, a very indifferent poet ; he loved to be well-dressed ; 
and I remember a little young gentleman whom Mr. Walsh used 
to take into his company, as a double foil to his person and capacity, 
. . . Enquire between Sunninghill and Oakingkam for a young, 
short, squab gentleman, the very bow of the God of Love, and tell 
me whether he be a proper author to make personal reflections? 
— He may extol the antients, but he has reason to thank the gods 
that he was born a modern; for had he been born of Grecian 
parents, and his father consequently had by law had the absolute 
disposal of him, his life had been no longer than that of one of his 
poems, the life of half a day. — Let the person of a gentleman of 
his parts be never so contemptible, his inward man is ten times 
more ridiculous ; it being impossible that his outward form, though 
it be that of downright monkey, should differ so much from human 
shape, as his unthinking immaterial part does from human under- 
standing.' Thus began the hostility between Pope and Dennis, 
which, though it was suspended for a short time, never was ap- 
peased. Pope seems, at first, to have attacked him wantonly; 
but though he always professed to despise him, he discovers, by 
mentioning him very often, that he felt his force or his venom. 

Of this Essay Pope declared that he did not expect the sale to be 
quick, because not one gentleman in sixty, even of liberal education, 
could understand it. The gentlemen, and the education of that 
time, seem to have been of a lower character than they are of this. 
He mentioned a thousand copies as a numerous impression. 

Dennis was not his only censurer; the zealous papists thought 
the monks treated with too much contempt, and Erasmus too 
studiously praised; but to these objections he had not much re- 
gard. 

The Essay has been translated into French by Hamilton, 
author of the Comte de Grammont, whose version was never printed, 
by Roboth am secretary to the King for Hanover, and by Resnel; 
and commented by Dr. Warburton, who has discovered in it 



192 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

such order and connection as was not perceived by Addison, nor, 
as is said, intended by the author. 

Almost every poem, consisting of precepts, is so far arbitrary 
and immethodical, that many of the paragraphs may change places 
with no apparent inconvenience; for of two or more positions, 
depending upon some remote and general principle, there is seldom 
any cogent reason why one should precede the other. But for the 
order in which they stand, whatever it be, a little ingenuity may 
easily give a reason. // is possible, says Hooker, that by long cir- 
cumduction, from any one truth all truth may be inferred. Of all 
homogeneous truths at least, of all truths respecting the same general 
end, in whatever series they may be produced, a concatenation by 
intermediate ideas may be formed, such as, when it is once shewn, 
shall appear natural ; but if this order be reversed, another mode 
of connection equally specious may be found or made. Aristotle 
is praised for naming Fortitude first of the cardinal virtues, as that 
without which no other virtue can steadily be practised; but 
he might, with equal propriety, have placed Prudence and Justice 
before it, since without Prudence Fortitude is mad; without 
Justice, it is mischievous. 

As the end of method is perspicuity, that series is sufficiently 
regular that avoids obscurity; and where there is no obscurity 
it will not be difficult to discover method. 

In the Spectator was published the Messiah, which he first sub- 
mitted to the perusal of Steele, and corrected in compliance with his 
criticisms. 

It is reasonable to infer, from his Letters, that the verses on the 
Unfortunate Lady were written about the time when his Essay 
was published. The Lady's name and adventures I have sought 
with fruitless enquiry. 

I can therefore tell no more than I have learned from Mr. Ruff- 
head, who writes with the confidence of one who could trust his 
information. She was a woman of eminent rank and large fortune,^ 
the ward of an unkle, who, having given her a proper education, 
expected like other guardians that she should make at least an 
equal match ; and such he proposed to her, but found it rejected 
in favour of a young gentleman of inferior condition. 

Having discovered the correspondence between the two lovers, 



THE LIFE OF POPE 1 93 

and finding the young lady determined to abide by her own choice, 
he supposed that separation might do what can rarely be done by 
arguments, and sent her into a foreign country, where she was 
obliged to converse only with those from whom her unkle had 
nothing to fear. 

Her lover took care to repeat his vows ; but his letters were inter- 
cepted and carried to her guardian, who directed her to be watched 
with still greater vigilance; till of this restraint she grew so im- 
patient, that she bribed a woman-servant to procure her a sword, 
which she directed to her heart. 

From this account, given with evident intention to raise the 
Lady's character, it does not appear that she had any claim to 
praise, nor much to compassion. She seems to have been im- 
patient, violent, and ungovernable. Her unkle's power could not 
have lasted long; the hour of liberty and choice would have 
come in time. But her desires were too hot for delay, and she 
liked self-murder better than suspence. 

Nor is it discovered that the unkle, whoever he was, is with 
much justice delivered to posterity as Si false Guardian; he seems 
to have done only that for which a guardian is appointed; he 
endeavoured to direct his niece till she should be able to direct 
herself. Poetry has not often been worse employed than in dignify- 
ing the amorous fury of a raving girl. 

Not long after, he wrote The Rape of the Lock, the most airy, 
the most ingenious, and the most delightful of all his compositions, 
occasioned by a frolick of gallantry, rather too familiar, in which 
Lord Petre cut off a lock of Mrs. Arabella Termor's hair. This, 
whether stealth or violence, was so much resented, that the com- 
merce of the two families, before very friendly, was interrupted. 
Mr. Caryl, a gentleman who, being secretary to King James's 
Queen, had followed his Mistress into France, and who being the 
author of Sir Solomon Single, a comedy, and some translations, 
was entitled to the notice of a Wit, solicited Pope to endeavour a 
reconcihation by a ludicrous poem, which might bring both the 
parties to a better temper. In compliance with Caryl's request, 
though his name was for a long time marked only by the first and 
last letter, C — 1, a poem of two cantos was written (1711), as is 
said, in a fortnight, and sent to the offended Lady, who liked it well 



194 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 



enough to shew it ; and, with the usual process of literary transac- 
tions, the author, dreading a surreptitious edition, was forced to 
publish it. 

The event is said to have been such as was desired ; the pacifica- 
tion and diversion of all to whom it related, except Sir George 
Brown, who complained with some bitterness that, in the character 
of Sir Plume, he was made to talk nonsense. Whether all this be 
true, I have some doubt; for at Paris a few years ago, a niece of 
Mrs. Fermor, who presided in an English Convent, mentioned 
Pope's work with very little gratitude, rather as an insult than an 
honour; and she may be supposed to have inherited the opinion 
of her family. 

At its first appearance it was termed by Addison merum sal. 
Pope, however, saw that it was capable of improvement; and, 
having luckily contrived to borrow his machinery from the Rosi- 
crucians, imparted the scheme with which his head was teeming to 
Addison, who told him that his work, as it stood, was a delicious 
little thing, and gave him no encouragement to retouch it. 

This has been too hastily considered as an instance of Addison's 
jealousy ; for as he could not guess the conduct of the new design, 
or the possibilities of pleasure comprised in a fiction of which there 
had been no examples, he might very reasonably and kindly 
persuade the author to acquiesce in his own prosperity, and forbear 
an attempt which he considered as an unnecessary hazard. 

Addison's counsel was happily rejected. Pope foresaw the future 
efflorescence of imagery then budding in his mind, and resolved 
to spare no art, or industry of cultivation. The soft luxuriance 
of his fancy was already shooting, and all the gay varieties 
of diction were already at his hand to colour and embellish it. 

His attempt was justified by its success. The Rape of the Lock 
stands forward, in the classes of literature, as the most exquisite 
example of ludicrous poetry. Berkeley congratulated him upon 
the display of powers more truly poetical than he had shewn 
before; with elegance of description and justness of precepts, 
he had now exhibited boundless fertility of invention. 

He always considered the intermixture of the machinery with 
the action as his most successful exertion of poetical art. He 
indeed could never afterwards produce any thing of such 



THE LIFE OF POPE 



195 



unexampled excellence. Those performances, which strike with 
wonder, are combinations of skilful genius with happy casualty; 
and it is not likely that any felicity, like the discovery of a new race 
of preternatural agents, should happen twice to the same man. 

Of this poem the author was, I think, allowed to enjoy the 
praise for a long time without disturbance. Many years after- 
wards Dennis published some remarks upon it, with very little 
force, and with no effect ; for the opinion of the publick was already 
settled, and it was no longer at the mercy of criticism. 

About this time he published The Temple of Fame, which, as he 
tells Steele in their correspondence, he had written two years before ; 
that is, when he was only twenty-two years old, an early time of 
life for so much learning and so much observation as that work 
exhibits. 

On this poem Dennis afterwards published some remarks, of 
which the most reasonable is, that some of the lines represent 
motion as exhibited by sculpture. 

Of the Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard, I do not know the date. 
His first inclination to attempt a composition of that tender kind 
arose, as Mr. Savage told me, from his perusal of Prior's Nut-brown 
Maid. How much he has surpassed Prior's work it is not necessary 
to mention, when perhaps it may be said with justice, that he has 
excelled every composition of the same kind. The mixture of 
religious hope and resignation gives an elevation and dignity to 
disappointed love, which images merely natural cannot bestow. 
The gloom of a convent strikes the imagination with far greater 
force than the solitude of a grove. 

This piece was, however, not much his favourite in his later 
years, though I never heard upon what principle he slighted it. 

In the next year (17 13) he published Windsor Forest; of which 
part was, as he relates, written at sixteen, about the same time as 
his Pastorals, and the latter part was added afterwards: where 
the addition begins, we are not told. The lines relating to the 
Peace confess their own date. It is dedicated to Lord Lansdowne, 
who was then high in reputation and influence among the Tories ; 
and it is said, that the conclusion of the poem gave great pain to 
Addison, both as a poet and a politician. Reports like this are 
often spread with boldness very disproportionate to their evidence. 



196 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

Why should Addison receive any particular disturbance from the 
last lines of Windsor Forest? If contrariety of opinion could 
poison a politician, he would not live a day; and, as a poet, 
he must have felt Pope's force of genius much more from many 
other parts of his works. 

The pain that Addison might feel it is not likely that he would 
confess; and it is certain that he so well suppressed his discontent, 
that Pope now thought himself his favourite; for having been 
consulted in the revisal of Cato, he introduced it by a Prologue; 
and, when Dennis published his Remarks, undertook not indeed 
to vindicate but to revenge his friend by a Narrative of the Frenzy 
of John Dennis. 

There is reason to believe that Addison gave no encouragement 
to this disingenuous hostility; for, says Pope, in a Letter to him, 
'indeed your opinion, that 'tis entirely to be neglected, would be 
my own in my own case ; but I felt more warmth here than I did 
when I first saw his book against myself (though indeed in two 
minutes it made me heartily merry).' Addison was not a man on 
whom such cant of sensibility could make much impression. He 
left the pamphlet to itself, having disowned 't to Dennis, and per- 
haps did not think Pope to have deserved much by his officiousness. 

This year [17 13] was printed in the Guardian the ironical com- 
parison between the Pastorals of Philips and Pope ; a composition 
of artifice, criticism, and literature, to which nothing equal will 
easily be found. The superiority of Pope is so ingeniously dis- 
sembled, and the feeble lines of Philips so skilfully preferred, that 
Steele, being deceived, was unwilling to print the paper lest Pope 
should be offended. Addison immediately saw the writer's 
design; and, as it seems, had malice enough to conceal his dis- 
covery, and to permit a publication which, by making his friend 
Philips ridiculous, made him for ever an enemy to Pope. 

It appears that about this time Pope had a strong inclination to 
unite the art of Painting with that of Poetry, and put himself 
under the tuition of Jervas. He was near-sighted, and therefore 
not formed by nature for a painter : he tried, however, how far he 
could advance, and sometimes persuaded his friends to sit. A 
picture of Betterton, supposed to be drawn by him, was in the posses- 
sion of Lord Mansfield : if this was taken from life, he must have 



THE LIFE OF POPE 



197 



begun to paint earlier; for Betterton was now dead. Pope's 
ambition of this new art produced some encomiastick verses to 
Jervas, which certainly shew his power as a poet, but I have been 
told that they betray his ignorance of painting. 

He appears to have regarded Betterton with kindness and 
esteem; and after his death published, under his name, a version 
into modern English of Chaucer's Prologues, and one of his Tales, 
which, as was related by Mr. Harte, were believed to have been the 
performance of Pope himself by Fenton, who made him a gay 
offer of five pounds, if he would shew them in the hand of Betterton. 

The next year (17 13) produced a bolder attempt, by which 
profit was sought as well as praise. The poems which he had 
hitherto written, however they might have diffused his name, 
had made very little addition to his fortune. The allowance which 
his father made him, though, proportioned to what he had, it 
might be liberal, could not be large; his religion hindered him 
from the occupation of any civil employment, and he complained 
that he wanted even money to buy books. 

He therefore resolved to try how far the favour of the publick 
extended, by soliciting a subscription to a version of the Iliad^ 
with large notes. 

To print by subscription was, for some time, a practice peculiar 
to the English. The first considerable work for which this ex- 
pedient was employed is said to have been Dryden's Virgil; and 
it had been tried again with great success when the Tatlers were 
collected into volumes. 

There was reason to believe that Pope's attempt would be 
successful. He was in the full bloom of reputation, and was 
personally known to almost all whom dignity of employment or 
splendour of reputation had made eminent; he conversed indiffer- 
ently with both parties, and never disturbed the publick with his 
political opinions; and it might be naturally expected, as each 
faction then boasted its hterary zeal, that the great men, who on 
other occasions practised all the violence of opposition, would 
emulate each other in their encouragement of a poet who delighted 
all, and by whom none had been offended. 

With those hopes, he offered an English Iliad to subscribers, 
in six volumes in quarto, for six guineas ; a sum, according to the 



1^8 SAMUEL JOHNSON 



value of money at that time, by no means inconsiderable, and 
greater than I believe to have been ever asked before. His pro- 
posal, however, was very favourably received, and the patrons of 
literature were busy to recommend his undertaking, and promote 
his interest. Lord Oxford, indeed, lamented that such a genius 
should be wasted upon a work not original; but proposed no 
means by which he might live without it : Addison recommended 
caution and moderation, and advised him not to be content with 
the praise of half the nation, when he might be universally favoured. 

The greatness of the design, the popularity of the author, and 
the attention of the literary world, naturally raised such expecta- 
tions of the future sale, that the booksellers made their offers with 
great eagerness; but the highest bidder was Bernard Lintot, 
who became proprietor on condition of supplying, at his own ex- 
pence, all the copies which were to be delivered to subscribers, 
or presented to friends, and paying two hundred pounds for every 
volume. 

Of the Quartos it was, I believe, stipulated that none should be 
printed but for the author, that the subscription might not be de- 
preciated; but Lintot impressed the same pages upon a small 
Folio, and paper perhaps a little thinner; and sold exactly at 
half the price, for half a guinea each volume, books 
so little inferior to the Quartos, that, by a fraud of trade, those 
Folios, being afterwards shortened by cutting away the top and 
bottom, were sold as copies printed for the subscribers. 

Lintot printed two hundred and fifty on royal paper in Folio 
for two guineas a volume; of the small Folio, having printed 
seventeen hundred and fifty copies of the first volume, he reduced 
the number in the other volumes to a thousand. 

It is unpleasant to relate that the bookseller, after all his hopes 
and all his liberality, was, by a very unjust and illegal action, 
defrauded of his profit. An edition of the English Iliad was 
printed in Holland in Duodecimo, and imported clandestinely for 
the gratification of those who were impatient to read what they 
could not yet afford to buy. This fraud could only be counter- 
acted by an edition equally cheap and more commodious; and 
Lintot was compelled to contract his Folio at once into a Duodecimo, 
and lose the advantage of an intermediate gradation. The notes, 



THE LIFE OF POPE 



199 



which in the Dutch copies were placed at the end of each book, 
as they had been in the large volumes, were now subjoined to the 
text in the same page, and are therefore more easily consulted. 
Of this edition two thousand five hundred were first printed, and 
five thousand a few weeks afterwards; rbiivt- ii«i€ie|(Ji?gr§at! numbers 
were necessary to produce considecaiilfe fir^feti ^^nini 

Pope, having now emitted Ms pEQ!poskis| tmd engaged not only 
his own reputation, but in some degree that of his friends who pat- 
ronised his subscription, began to be frighted at his own under- 
taking; and finding himself at first embarrassed with difficulties, 
which retarded and oppressed him, he was for a time timorous 
and uneasy; had his nights disturbed by dreams of long journeys 
through unknown ways, and wished, as he said, that somebody 
would hang him. 

This misery, however, was not of long continuance; he grew 
by degrees more acquainted with Homer's images and expres- 
sions, and practice increased his facility of versification. In a 
short time he represents himself as despatching regularly fifty 
verses a day, which would shew him by an easy computation 
the termination of his labour. 

His own diffidence was not his only vexation. He that asks 
a subscription soon finds that he has enemies. All who do not 
encourage him defame him. He that wants money will rather 
be thought angry than poor, and he that wishes to save his money 
conceals his avarice by his malice. Addison had hinted his 
suspicion that Pope was too much a Tory; and some of the 
Tories suspected his principles because he had contributed to 
the Guardian, which was carried on by Steele. 

To those who censured his politicks were added enemies yet 
more dangerous, who called in question his knowledge of Greek, 
and his quaKfications for a translator of Homer. To these he 
made no publick opposition; but in one of his Letters escapes 
from them as well as he can. At an age like this, for he was 
not more than twenty-five, with an irregular education, and a 
course of life of which much seems to have passed in conversa- 
tion, it is not very likely that he overflowed with Greek. But 
when he felt himself deficient he sought assistance; and what 
man of learning would refuse to help him? Minute enquiries 



200 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

into the force of words are less necessary in translating Homer 
than other poets, because his positions are general, and his repre- 
sentations natural, with very little dependence on local or tempo- 
rary customs, on those changeable scenes of artificial life, which, 
by mingling original with accidental notions, and crowding the 
mind with images which time effaces, produces ambiguity in 
diction, and obscurity in books. To this open display of unadul- 
terated nature it must be ascribed, that Homer has fewer passages 
of doubtful meaning than any other poet either in the learned 
or in modern languages. I have read of a man, who being, 
by his ignorance of Greek, compelled to gratify his curiosity with 
the Latin printed on the opposite page, declared that from the 
rude simplicity of the lines literally rendered, he formed nobler 
ideas of the Homeric majesty than from the laboured elegance 
of polished versions. 

Those literal translations were always at hand, and from them 
he could easily obtain his author's sense with sufficient certainty; 
and among the readers of Homer the number is very small of those 
who find much in the Greek more than in the Latin, except the 
musick of the numbers. 

If more help was wanting, he had the poetical translation of 
Eohanus Hessus, an unwearied writer of Latin verses; he 
had the French Homers of La Valterie and Dacier, and the Eng- 
lish of Chapman, Hobbes, and Ogylby. With Chapman, whose 
work, though not totally neglected, seems to have been popular 
almost to the end of the last century, he had very frequent con- 
sultations, and perhaps never translated any passage till he had 
read his version, which indeed he has sometimes been suspected 
of using instead of the original. 

Notes were likewise to be provided ; for the six volumes would 
have been very little more than six pamphlets without them. 
What the mere perusal of the text could suggest, Pope wanted 
no assistance to collect or methodize; but more was necessary; 
many pages were to be filled, and learning must supply materials 
to wit and judgement. Something might be gathered from Dacier ; 
but no man loves to be indebted to his contemporaries, and 
Dacier was accessible to common readers. Eustathius was 
therefore necessarily consulted. To read Eustathius, of whose 



THE LIFE OF POPE 20T 

work there was then no Latin version, I suspect Pope, if he had 
been willing, not to have been able; some other was therefore 
to be found, who had leisure as well as abilities, and he was 
doubtless most readily employed who would do much work for 
little money. 

The history of the notes has never been traced. Broome, 
in his preface to his poems, declares himself the commentator 
in part upon the Iliad; and it appears from Fenton's Letter, 
preserved in the Museum, that Broome was at first engaged in 
consulting Eustathius; but that after a time, whatever was the 
reason, he desisted: another man of Cambridge was then em- 
ployed, who soon grew weary of the work ; and a third, that was 
recommended by Thirlby, is now discovered to have been Jortin, 
a man since well known to the learned world, who complained 
that Pope, having accepted and approved his performance, never 
testified any curiosity to see him, and who professed to have 
forgotten the terms on which he worked. The terms which Fen- 
ton uses are very mercantile : I think at first sight that his per- 
formance is very commendable, and have sent word for him to 
finish the ijth book, and to send it with his demands for his trouble. 
I have here enclosed the specimen; if the rest come before the re- 
turn, I will keep them till I receive your order. 

Broome then offered his service a second time, which was prob- 
ably accepted, as they had afterwards a closer correspondence. 
Parnell contributed the Life of Homer, which Pope found so 
harsh, that he took great pains in correcting it; and by his own 
diligence, with such help as kindness or money could procure him, 
in somewhat more than five years he completed his version of the 
Iliad, with the notes. He began it in 17 12, his twenty-fifth year, 
and concluded it in 17 18, his thirtieth year. 

When we find him translating fifty lines a day, it is natural 
to suppose that he would have brought his work to a more speedy 
conclusion. The Iliad, containing less than sixteen thousand 
verses, might have been despatched in less than three hundred 
and twenty days by fifty verses in a day. The notes, compiled 
with the assistance of his mercenaries, could not be supposed 
to require more time than the text. According to this calculation, 
the progress of Pope may seem to have been slow; but the dis- 



202 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

tance is commonly very great between actual performances and 
speculative possibility. It is natural to suppose, that as much 
as has been done to-day may be done to-morrow; but on the 
morrow some difficulty emerges, or some external impediment 
obstructs. Indolence, interruption, business, and pleasure, all 
take their turns of retardation ; and every long work is length- 
ened by a thousand causes that can, and ten thousand that can- 
not, be recounted. Perhaps no extensive and multifarious per- 
formance was ever effected within the term originally fixed in 
the undertaker's mind. He that runs against Time has an 
antagonist not subject to casualties. 

The encouragement given to this translation, though report 
seems to have overrated it, was such as the world has not often 
seen. The subscribers were five hundred and seventy-five. The 
copies for which subscription were given were six hundred and 
fifty-four; and only six hundred and sixty were printed. For 
those copies Pope had nothing to pay; he therefore received, 
including the two hundred pounds a volume, five thousand three 
hundred and twenty pounds four shillings, without deduction, as 
the books were supplied by Lintot. 

By the success of his subscription Pope was relieved from those 
pecuniary distresses with which, notwithstanding his popularity, 
he had hitherto struggled. Lord Oxford had often lamented 
his disqualification for publick employment, but never proposed 
a pension. While the translation of Homer was in its progress, 
Mr. Craggs, then secretary of state, offered to procure him a 
pension, which, at least during his ministry, might be enjoyed 
with secrecy. This was not accepted by Pope, who told him, 
however, that if he should be pressed with want of money, he 
would send to him for occasional supplies. Craggs was not 
long in power, and was never solicited for money by Pope, who 
disdained to beg what he did not want. 

With the product of this subscription, which he had too much 
discretion to squander, he secured his future life from want by 
considerable annuities. The estate of the Duke of Buckingham 
was found to have been charged with five hundred pounds a year, 
payable to Pope, which doubtless his translation enabled him 
to purchase. 



THE LIFE OF POPE 



203 



It cannot be unwelcome to literary curiosity, that I deduce 
thus minutely the history of the English Iliad. It is certainly 
the noblest version of poetry which the world has ever seen; and 
its publication must therefore be considered as one of the great 
events in the annals of Learning. 

To those who have skill to estimate the excellence and difficulty 
of this great work, it must be very desirable to know how it was 
performed, and by what gradations it advanced to correctness. 
Of such an intellectual process the knowledge has very rarely 
been attainable; but happily there remains the original copy of 
the Iliad, which, being obtained by Bolingbroke as a curiosity, 
descended from him to Mallet, and is now by the solicitation of 
the late Dr. Maty reposited in the Museum. 

Between this manuscript, which is written upon accidental 
fragments of paper, and the printed edition, there must have been 
an intermediate copy, that was perhaps destroyed as it returned 
from the press. 

From the first copy I have procured a few transcripts, and 
shall exhibit first the printed lines; then, in a smaller print, 
those of the manuscripts, with all their variations. Those words 
in the small print which are given in Italicks are cancelled in the 
copy, and the words placed under them adopted in their stead. 

The beginning of the first book stands thus: 

The wrath of Peleus' son, the direful spring 
Of all the Grecian woes, O Goddess, sing; 
That wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy reign 
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain. 

The stern Pelides' rage, O Goddess, sing, 

wrath 
Of all the woes of Greece the fatal spring, 

Grecian 
That strew'd with warriors dead the Phrygian plain, 

heroes 
And peopled the dark shades with heroes slain; 
fill'd the shady hell with chiefs untimely 

Whose limbs, unburied on the naked shore, 

Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore, 

Since great Achilles and Atrides strove; 

Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove. 

Whose limbs, unburied on the hostile shore, 
Devouring dogs and greedy vultures tore, 



204 SAMUEL JOHNSON 



Since first Atrides and Achilles strove; 

Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove. 

Declare, O Muse, in what ill-fated hour 

Sprung the fierce strife, from what offended Power! 

Latona's son a dire contagion spread. 

And heap'd the camp with mountains of the dead; 

The King of Men his reverend priest defy'd, 

And for the King's offence, the people dy'd. 

Declare, O Goddess, what offended Power 
Enflam'd their rage, in that ill omened hour; 

anger fatal, hapless 

Phoebus himself the dire debate procur'd, 

fierce 
T' avenge the wrongs his injured priest endur'd; 
For this the God a dire infection spread, 
And heap'd the camp with millions of the dead: 
The King of Men the sacred Sire defy'd. 
And for the King's offence the people dy'd. 

For Chryses sought with costly gifts to gain 
His captive daughter from the Victor's chain; 
Suppliant the venerable Father stands, 
Apollo's awful ensigns grace his hands. 
By these he begs, and, lowly bending down, 
Extends the sceptre and the laurel crown. 

For Chryses sought by presents to regain 
costly gifts to gain 
His captive daughter from the Victor's chain; 
Suppliant the venerable Father stands, 
Apollo's awful ensigns grac'd his hands, 
By these he begs, and lowly bending down 
The golden sceptre and the laurel crown, 
Presents the sceptre 
For these as ensigns of his God he hare. 
The God that sends his golden shafts afar; 
Then low on earth, the venerable man, 
SuppHant before the brother kings began. 

He sued to all, but chief implor'd for grace 
The brother kings of Atreus' royal rare; 
Ye kings and warriors, may your vows be crown'd. 
And Troy's proud walls lie level with the ground; 
May Jove restore you, when your toils are o'er. 
Safe to the pleasures of your native shore. 

To all he sued, but chief implor'd for grace 

The brother kings of Atreus' royal race. 

Ye sons of Atreus, may your vows be crown'd, 

Kings and warriors 
Your labours. By the Gods be all your labours crown'd; 



THE LIFE OF POPE 205 

So may the Gods your arms with conquest bless. 
And Troy's proud walls lie level with the ground; 
Till laid 

And crown your labours with deserved success ; 
May Jove restore you, when your toils are o'er, 
Safe to the pleasures of your native shore. 

But, oh ! relieve a wretched parent's pain, 
And give Chryseis to these arms again; 
K mercy fail, yet let my present move, 
- And dread avenging Phoebus, son of Jove. 

But, oh! relieve a hapless parent's pain, 
And give my daughter to these arms again; 
Receive my gifts ; if mercy fails, yet let my present move, 
And fear the God that deals his darts around, 
avenging Phoebus, son of Jove. 

The Greeks, in shouts, their joint assent declare 
The priest to reverence, and release the fair. 
Not so Atrides; he, with kingly pride 
Repuls'd the sacred Sire, and thus reply'd. 

He said, the Greeks their joint assent declare, 
The father said, the gen'rous Greeks relent, 
T'accept the ransom, and release the fair: 
Revere the priest, and speak their joint assent : 
Not so the tyrant, he, with kingly pride, 

Atrides, 
Repuls'd the sacred Sire, and thus reply'd. 
[Not so the tyrant. Dryden.] 

Of these lines, and of the whole first book, I am told that there 
was yet a former copy, more varied, and more deformed with 
interlineations. 

The beginning of the second book varies very little from the 
printed page, and is therefore set down without any parallel: 
the few differences do not require to be elaborately displayed. 

Now pleasing sleep had seal'd each mortal eye; 
Stretch'd in theii; tents the Grecian leaders lie; 
Th' Immortals slumber'd on their thrones above, 
All but the ever-watchful eye of Jove. 
To honour Thetis' son he bends his care. 
And plunge the Greeks in all the woes of war. 
Then bids an empty phantom rise to sight. 
And thus commands the vision of the night: 

directs 
Fly hence, delusive dream, and, light as air. 
To Agamemnon's royal tent repair; 
Bid him in arms draw forth th' embattled train, 
March all his legions to the dusty plain. 



206 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

Now tell the King 'tis given him to destroy 

Declare ev'n now 

The lofty walls of wide-extended Troy; 

tow'rs 
For now no more the Gods with Fate contend; 
At Juno's suit the heavenly factions end. 
Destruction hovers o'er yon devoted wall, 

hangs 
And nodding Ilium waits th' impending fall. 

Invocation to the Catalogue of Ships. 

Say, Virgins, seated round the throne divine, 
All-knowing Goddesses ! immortal Nine ! 
Since earth's wide region, heaven's unmeasur'd height. 
And hell's abyss, hide nothing from your sight, 
(We, wretched mortals ! lost in doubts below. 
But guess by rumour, and but boast we know) 
Oh say what heroes, fir'd by thirst of fame, 
Or urg'd by wrongs, to Troy's destruction came! 
To count them all, demands a thousand tongues, 
A throat of brass and adamantine lungs. 

Now, Virgin Goddesses, immortal Nine ! 

That round Olympus' heavenly summit shine. 

Who see through heaven and earth, and hell profound. 

And all things know, and all things can resound; 

Relate what armies sought the Trojan land. 

What nations follow'd, and what chiefs command; 

(For doubtful Fame distracts mankind below, 

And nothing can we tell, and nothing know) 

Without your aid, to count th' unnumber'd train, 

A thousand mouths, a thousand tongues were vain. 

Book V. V. I. 

But Pallas now Tydides' soul inspires, 
Fills with her force, and warms with all her fires: 
Above the Greeks his deathless fame to raise, 
And crown her hero with distinguish'd praise, 
High on his helm celestial lightnings play, . 
His beamy shield emits a living ray; 
Th' unwearied blaze incessant streams supplies, 
Like the red star that fires th' autumnal skies. 

But Pallas now Tydides' soxil inspires, 
Fills with her rage, and warms with all her fires; 

force, 
O'er all the Greeks decrees his fame to raise, 
Above the Greeks her warrior's fame to raise, 

his deathless 
And crown her hero with immortal praise: 
distinguish'd 



THE LIFE OF POPE 207 

Bright from his beamy crest the hghtnings play. 

High on helm 

From his broad buckler flasb'd the living ray, 
High on his helm celestial lightnings play, 
His beamy shield emits a living ray. 
The Goddess with her breath the flame supplies. 
Bright as the star whose fires in Autumn rise; 
Her breath divine thick streaming flames supplies, 
Bright as the star that fires th' autumnal skies: 
Th' unwearied blaze incessant streams supplies, 
Like the red star that fires th' autumnal slues. 

When fresh he rears his radiant orb to sight, 
And bath'd in ocean shoots a keener light. 
Such glories Pallas on the chief bestow'd, 
Such from his arms the fierce effulgence flow'd; 
Onward she drives him, furious to engage, 
Where the fight burns, and where the thickest rage. 

When fresh he rears his radiant orb to sight, 
And gilds old Ocean with a blaze of light, 
Bright as the star that fires th' autumnal skies. 
Fresh from the deep, and gilds the seas and skies. 
Such glories Pallas on her chief bestow'd. 
Such sparkling rays from his bright armour flow'd, 
Such from his arms the fierce effulgence flow'd. 
Onward she drives him headlong to engage, 

furious 
Where the war bleeds, and where the fiercest rage, 
fight burns, thickest 

The sons of Dares first the combat sought, 
A wealthy priest, but rich without a fault; 
In Vulcan's fame the father's days were led, 
The sons to toils of glorious battle bred; 

There lived a Trojan — Dares was his name. 
The priest of Vulcan, rich, yet void of blame; 
The sons of Dares first the combat sought, 
A wealthy priest, but rich without a fault. 

Conclusion of Book VIII. v. 687. 

As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, 
O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light; 
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene, 
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene; 
Around her throne the vivid planets roll. 
And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole: 
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed, 
And tip with silver every mountain's head; 
Then shine the vales — the rocks in prospect rise, 
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies; 



2o8 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight, 
Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light. 
So many flames before proud Ilion blaze, 
And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays; 
The long reflexion of the distant fires 
Gleam on the walls, and tremble on the spires: 
A thousand piles the dusky horrors gild, , 

And shoot a shady lustre o'er the field; 
Full fifty guards each flaming pile attend, 
Whose umber'd arms by fits thick flashes send; 
Loud neigh the coursers o'er their heaps of corn, 
And ardent warriors wait the rising morn. 

As when in stillness of the silent night, 
As when the moon in all her lustre bright. 
As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, 
O'er heaven's clear azure sheds her silver light; 

pure spreads sacred 

As still in air the trembling lustre stood. 
And o'er its golden border shoots a flood; 
When no loose gale disturbs the deep serene, 

not a breath 
And no dim cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene; 

not a 
Around her silver throne the planets glow. 
And stars unn umber'd trembling beams bestow; 
Around her throne the vivid planets roll, 
And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole: 
Clear gleams of light o'er the dark trees are seen, 

o'er the dark trees a yellow sheds. 
O'er the dark trees a yellower green they shed, 

gleam 
verdure 
And tip with silver all the mountain heads: 

forest 
And tip with silver every mountain's head. 
The valleys open, and the forests rise, 
The vales appear, the rocks in prospect rise, 
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise. 
All Nature stands reveal'd before our eyes; 
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies. 
The conscious shepherd, joyful at the sight. 
Eyes the blue vault, and numbers every light. 
The conscious swains rejoicing at the sight 

shepherds gazing with delight 
Eye the blue vault, and bless the vivid light, 

glorious 
useful 
So many flames before the navy blaze, 

proud Ilion 
And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays, 
Wide o'er the fields to Troy extend the gleams. 
And tip the distant spires with fainter beams; 
The long reflexions of the distant fires 
Gild the high walls, and tremble on the spires; 
Gleam on the walls and tremble on the spires; 
A thousand fires at distant stations bright, 
Gild the dark prospect, and dispel the night. 



THE LIFE OF POPE 



209 



Of these specimens every man who has cultivated poetry, or 
who delights to trace the mind from the rudeness of its first con- 
ceptions to the elegance of its last, will naturally desire a greater 
number; but most other readers are already tired, and I am not 
writing only to poets and philosophers. 

The Iliad was published volume by volume, as the transla- 
tion proceeded; the four first books appeared in 17 15. The 
expectation of this work was undoubtedly high, and every man 
who had connected his name with criticism, or poetry, was desir- 
ous of such intelligence as might enable him to talk upon the 
popular topick. Halifax, who, by having been first a poet, and 
then a patron of poetry, had acquired the right of being a judge, 
was willing to hear some books while they were yet unpublished. 
Of this rehearsal Pope afterwards gave the following account. 

'The famous Lord Halifax was rather a pretender to taste 
than really possessed of it. — When I had finished the two or 
three first books of my translation of the Iliad, that Lord de- 
sired to have the pleasure of hearing them read at his house. — 
Addison, Congreve, and Garth, were there at the reading. In 
four or five places. Lord Halifax stopt me very civilly, and with a 
speech each time, much of the same kind, "I beg your pardon, 
Mr. Pope; but there is something in that passage that does not 
quite please me. — Be so good as to mark the place, and con- 
sider it a little at your leisure. — I am sure you can give it a little 
turn." I returned from Lord Halifax's with Dr. Garth, in his 
chariot; and, as we were going along, was saying to the Doctor, 
that my Lord had laid me under a good deal of difficulty by such 
loose and general observations; that I had been thinking over 
the passages almost ever since, and could not guess at what it 
was that offended his Lordship in either of them. Garth laughed 
heartily at my embarrassment; said, I had not been long enough 
acquainted with Lord Halifax to know his way yet; that I need 
not puzzle myself about looking those places over and over, when 
I got home. ''All you need do (says he) is to leave them just as 
they are; call on Lord Halifax two or three months hence, thank 
him for his kind observations on those passages, and then read 
them to him as altered. I have known him much longer than 
you have, and will be answerable for the event." I followed his 



210 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

advice ; waited on Lord Halifax some time after ; said, I hoped he 
would find his objections to those passages removed; read them 
to him exactly as they were at first: and his Lordship was ex- 
tremely pleased with them, and cried out, Ay, now they are 
perfectly right: nothing can he better.'' 

It is seldom that the great or the wise suspect that they are 
despised or cheated. Halifax, thinking this a lucky opportunity 
of securing immortality, made some advances of favour and some 
overtures of advantage to Pope, which he seems to have received 
with sullen coldness. All our knowledge of this transaction is 
derived from a single Letter (Dec. i, 17 14), in which Pope says, 
' I am obliged to you, both for the favours you have done me, and 
those you intend me. I distrust neither your will nor your memory, 
when it is to do good; and if I ever become troublesome or so- 
licitous, it must not be out of expectation, but out of gratitude. 
Your Lordship may cause me to live agreeably in the town, or 
contentedly in the country, which is really all the difference I 
set between an easy fortune and a small one. It is indeed a high 
strain of generosity in you to think of making me easy all my 
life, only because I have been so happy as to divert you some few 
hours ; but, if I may have leave to add it is because you think me 
no enemy to my native country, there will appear a better reason ; 
for I must of consequence be very much (as I sincerely am) 
yours, &c.' 

These voluntary offers, and this faint acceptance, ended with- 
out effect. The patron was not accustomed to such frigid grati- 
tude, and the poet fed his own pride with the dignity of indepen- 
dence. They probably were suspicious of each other. Pope 
would not dedicate till he saw at what rate his praise was valued; 
he would be troublesome out of gratitude, not expectation. Halifax, 
thought himself entitled to confidence; and would give nothing, 
unless he knew what he should receive. Their commerce had its 
beginning in hope of praise on one side, and of money on the 
other, and ended because Pope was less eager of money than Hali- 
fax of praise. It is not likely that Halifax had any personal 
benevolence to Pope; it is evident that Pope looked on Halifax 
with scorn and hatred. 

The reputation of this great work failed of gaining him a patron ; 



THE LIFE OF POPE 211 

but it deprived him of a friend. Addison and he were now 
at the head of poetry and criticism; and both in such a state of 
elevation, that, like the two rivals in the Roman state, one could 
no longer bear an equal, nor the other a superior. Of the gradual 
abatement of kindness between friends, the beginning is often 
scarcely discernible by themselves, and the process is continued 
by petty provocations, and inciviHties sometimes peevishly re- 
turned, and sometimes contemptuously neglected, which would 
escape all attention but that of pride, and drop from any memory 
but that of resentment. That the quarrel of these two wits 
should be minutely deduced, is not to be expected from a writer 
to whom, as Homer says, nothing hut rumour has reached, and who 
has no personal knowledge. 

Pope doubtless approached Addison, when the reputation of 
their wit first brought them together, with the respect due to a 
man whose abilities wer^ acknowledged, and who, having attained 
that eminence to which he was himself aspiring, had in his hands 
the distribution of literary fame. He paid court with sufficient 
diligence by his Prologue to Cato, by his abuse of Dennis, and, 
with praise yet more direct, by his poem on the Dialogues on 
Medals, of which the immediate publication was then intended. 
In all this there was no hypocrisy ; for he confessed that he 
found in Addison something more pleasing than in any other man. 

It may be supposed, that as Pope saw himself favoured by 
the world, and more frequently compared his own powers with 
those of others, his confidence increased, and his submission 
lessened; and that Addison felt no delight from the advances 
of a young wit, who might soon contend with him for the highest 
place. Every great man, of whatever kind be his greatness, has 
among his friends those who officiously, or insidiously, quicken 
his attention to offences, heighten his disgust, and stimulate his 
resentment. Of such adherents Addison doubtless had many, 
and Pope was now too high to be without them. 

From the emission and reception of the Proposals for the Iliad, 
the kindness of Addison seems to have abated. Jervas the painter 
once pleased himself (Aug. 20, 17 14) with imagining that he had 
re-established their friendship ; and wrote to Pope that Addison 
once suspected him of too close a confederacy with Swift, but was 



212 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

now satisfied with his conduct. To this Pope answered, a week 
after, that his engagements to Swift were such as his services in 
regard to the subscription demanded, and that the Tories never 
put him under the necessity of asking leave to be grateful. But, 
says he, as Mr. Addison must he the judge in what regards him- 
self, and seems to have no very just one in regard to me, so I must 
own to you I expect nothing hut civility from him. In the 
same Letter he mentions Phihps, as having been busy to kindle 
animosity between them; but, in a Letter to Addison, he ex- 
presses some consciousness of behaviour, inattentively deficient in 
respect. 

Of Swift's industry in promoting the subscription there remains 
the testimony of Kennet, no friend to either him or Pope. 

'■ Nov. 2, 1 7 13, Dr. Swift came into the coffee-house, and had a 
bow from every body but me, who, I confess, could not but despise 
him. When I came to the anti-chamber to wait, before prayers. 
Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk and business, and acted as 
master of requests. — Then he instructed a young nobleman that 
the hest Poet in England was Mr. Pope (a papist), who had begun 
a translation of Homer into English verse, for which he must have 
them all suhscrihe; for, says he, the author shall not begin to print 
till / have a thousand guineas for him.' 

About this time it is likely that Steele, who was, with all his 
political fury, good-natured and ofl&cious, procured an interview 
between these angry rivals, which ended in aggravated malevolence. 
On this occasion, if the reports be true. Pope made his complaint 
with frankness and spirit, as a man undeservedly neglected or 
opposed ; and Addison affected a contemptuous unconcern, and, in 
a calm even voice, reproached Pope with his vanity, and, telling him 
of the improvements which his early works had received from his 
own remarks and those of Steele, said, that he, being now engaged in 
pubHck business, had no longer any care for his poetical reputation ; 
nor had any other desire, with regard to Pope, than that he should 
not, by too much arrogance, alienate the publick. 

To this Pope is said to have replied with great keenness and 
severity, upbraiding Addison with perpetual dependance, and 
with the abuse of those qualifications which he had obtained at the 
publick cost, and charging him with mean endeavours to obstruct 



THE LIFE OF POPE 



213 



the progress of rising merit. The contest rose so high, that they 
parted at last without any interchange of civihty. 

The first volume of Homer was (17 15) in time published; and a 
rival version of the first Iliad, for rivals the time of their appearance 
inevitably made them, was immediately printed, with the name of 
Tickell. It was soon perceived that, among the followers of Ad- 
dison, Tickell had the preference, and the criticksand poets divided 
into factions. /, says Pope, have the town, that is, the mob, on my 
side; hut it is not uncommon for the smaller party to supply by 
industry what it wants in numbers. — / appeal to the people as my 
rightful judges, and, while they are not inclined to condemn me, shall 
not fear the high-flyers at Button's. This opposition he immediately 
imputed to Addison, and complained of it in terms sufficiently 
resentful to Craggs, their common friend. 

When Addison's opinion was asked, he declared the versions to 
be both good, but Tickell's the best that had ever been written ; 
and sometimes said that they were both good, but that Tickell had 
more of Homer. 

Pope was now sufficiently irritated ; his reputation and his in- 
terest were at hazard. He once intended to print together the four 
versions of Dryden, Maynwaring, Pope, and Tickell, that they 
might be readily compared, and fairly estimated. This design 
seems to have been defeated by the refusal of Tonson, who was 
the proprietor of the other three versions. 

Pope intended at another time a rigorous criticism of Tickell's 
translation, and had marked a copy, which I have seen, in all 
places that appeared defective. But while he was thus meditating 
defence or revenge, his adversary sunk before him without a blow; 
the voice of the publick were not long divided, and the preference 
was universally given to Pope's performance. 

He was convinced, by adding one circumstance to another, that 
the other translation was the work of Addison himself; but if he 
knew it in Addison's lifetime, it does not appear that he told it. He 
left his illustrious antagonist to be punished by what has been 
considered as the most painful of all reflections, the remembrance 
of a crime perpetrated in vain. 

The other circumstances of their quarrel were thus related by 
Pope. 



214 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

'Philips seemed to have been encouraged to abuse me in coffee- 
houses, and conversations : and Gildon wrote a thing about 
Wycherley, in which he had abused both me and my relations very 
grossly. Lord Warwick himself told me one day, that it was in vain 
for me to endeavour to be well with Mr. Addison ; that his jealous 
temperwould never admit of a settled friendship between us; and, to 
convince me of what he had said, assured me, that Addison had 
encouraged Gildon to publish those scandals, and had given him ten 
guineas after they were published. The next day, while I was 
heated with what I had heard, I wrote a Letter to Mr. Addison, to 
let him know that I was not unacquainted with this behaviour of his ; 
that if I was to speak severely of him, in return for it, it should be in 
such a dirty way, that I should rather tell him, himself, fairly of 
his faults, and allow his good qualities ; and that it should be some- 
thing in the following manner : I then adjoined the first sketch of 
what has been since called my satire on Addison. Mr. Addison 
used me very civilly ever after.' 

The verses on Addison, when they were sent to Atterbury, were 
considered by him as the most excellent of Pope's performances; 
and the writer was advised, since he knew where his strength lay, 
not to suffer it to remain unemployed. 

This year (17 15) being, by the subscription, enabled to live more 
by choice, having persuaded his father to sell their estate at Binfield, 
he purchased, I think only for his life, that house at Twickenham 
to which his residence afterwards procured so much celebration, 
and removed thither with his father and mother. 

Here he planted the vines and the quincunx which his verses 
mention ; and being under the necessity of making a subterraneous 
passage to a garden on the other side of the road, he adorned it 
with fossile bodies, and dignified it with the title of a grotto; a 
place of silence and retreat, from which he endeavoured to persuade 
his friends and himself that cares and passions could be excluded. 

A grotto is not often the wish or pleasure of an Englishman, who 
has more frquent need to sohcit than exclude the sun ; but Pope's 
excavation was requisite as an entrance to his garden, and, as some 
men try to be proud of their defects, he extracted an ornament from 
an inconvenience, and vanity produced a grotto where necessity 
enforced a passage. It may be frequently remarked of the studious 



THE LIFE OF POPE 



215 



and speculative, that they are proud of trifles, and that their amuse- 
ments seem frivolous and childish; whether it be that men con- 
scious of great reputation think themselves above the reach of 
censure, and safe in the admission of neghgent indulgences, or that 
mankind expect from elevated genius an uniformity of greatness, 
and watch its degradation with malicious wonder; like him who 
having followed with his eye an eagle into the clouds, should lament 
that she ever descended to a perch. 

While the volumes of his Homer were annually published, he 
collected his former works (17 17) into one quarto volume, to which 
he prefixed a Preface, written with great spriteliness and elegance, 
which was afterwards reprinted, with some passages subjoined that 
he at first omitted ; other marginal additions of the same kind he 
made in the later editions of his poems. Waller remarks, that poets 
lose half their praise, because the reader knows not what they have 
blotted. Pope's voracity of fame taught him the art of obtaining 
the accumulated honour both of what he had published, and of 
what he had suppressed. 

In this year his father died suddenly, in his seventy-fifth year, 
having passed twenty-nine years in privacy. He is not known but 
by the character which his son has given him. If the money with 
which he retired was all gotten by himself, he had traded very suc- 
cessfully in times when sudden riches were rarely attainable. 

The publication of the Iliad was at last completed in 1 720. The 
splendour and success of this work raised Pope many enemies, that 
endeavoured to depreciate his abilities. Burnet, who was afterwards 
a Judge of no mean reputation, censured him in a piece called 
Ilomerides before it was published ; Ducket likewise endeavoured 
to make him ridiculous. Dennis was the perpetual persecutor 
of all his studies. But, whoever his criticks were, their writings are 
lost, and the names which are preserved, are preserved in the 
Dunciad. 

In this disastrous year (1720) of national infatuation, when 
more riches than Peru can boast were expected from the South Sea, 
when the contagion of avarice tainted every mind, and even poets 
panted after wealth, Pope was seized with the universal passion, 
and ventured some of his money. The stock rose in its price ; and 
he for a while thought himself the Lord of thousands. But this 



2i6 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

dream of happiness did not last long, and he seems to have waked 
soon enough to get clear with the loss only of what he once thought 
himself to have won, and perhaps not wholly of that. 

Next year he published some select poems of his friend Dr. 
Parnell, with a very elegant Dedication to the Earl of Oxford ; who, 
after all his struggles and dangers, then lived in retirement, still 
under the frown of a victorious faction, who could take no pleasure 
in hearing his praise. 

He gave the same year (1721) an edition of Shakespeare. His 
name was now of so much authority, that Tonson thought himself 
entitled, by annexing it, to demand a subscription of six guineas 
for Shakespeare's plays in six quarto volumes; nor did his expec- 
tation much deceive him ; for of seven hundred and fifty which he 
printed, he dispersed a great number at the price proposed. The 
reputation of that edition indeed sunk afterwards so low, that one 
hundred and forty copies were sold at sixteen shillings each. 

On this undertaking, to which Pope was induced by a reward of 
two hundred and seventeen pounds twelve shillings, he seemed 
never to have reflected afterwards without vexation ; for Theobald, 
a man of heavy diligence, with very slender powers, first, in a book 
called Shakespeare Restored, and then in a formal edition, detected 
his deficiencies with all the insolence of victory; and, as he was 
now high enough to be feared and hated, Theobald had from 
others all the help that could be supplied, by the desire of hum- 
bling a haughty character. 

From this time Pope became an enemy to editors, collators, com- 
mentators, and verbal criticks; and hoped to persuade the world, 
that he miscarried in this undertaking only by having a mind too 
great for such minute employment. 

Pope in his edition undoubtedly did many things wrong, and 
left many things undone ; but let him not be defrauded of his due 
praise. He was the first that knew, at least the first that told, by 
what helps the text might be improved. If he inspected the early 
editions negligently, he taught others to be more accurate. In his 
Preface he expanded with great skill and elegance the character 
which had been given of Shakespeare by Dryden ; and he drew the 
publick attention upon his works, which, though often mentioned, 
had been little read. 



THE LIFE OF POPE 21 7 

Soon after the appearance of the Iliad, resolving not to let the 
general kindness cool, he published proposals for a translation of 
the Odyssey, in five volumes, for five guineas. He was willing, how- 
ever, now to have associates in his labour, being either weary 
with toiling upon another's thoughts, or having heard, as Ruffhead 
relates, that Fenton and Broome had already begun the work, and 
liking better to have them confederates than rivals. 

In the patent, instead of saying that he had translated the Odyssey ^ 
as he had said of the Iliad, he says that he had undertaken a trans- 
lation ; and in the proposals the subscription is said to be not solely 
for his own use, but for that of two of his friends who have assisted 
him in this work. 

In 1723, while he was engaged in this new version, he appeared 
before the Lords at the memorable trial of Bishop Atterbury, with 
whom he had lived in great familiarity, and frequent correspond- 
ence. Atterbury had honestly recommended to him the study of 
the popish controversy, in hope of his conversion ; to which Pope 
answered in a manner that cannot much recommend his principles, 
or his judgement. In questions and projects of learning, they 
agreed better. He was called at the trial to give an account of 
Atterbury's domestick life, and private employment, that it might 
appear how little time he had left for plots. Pope had but few 
words to utter, and in those few he made several blunders. 

His Letters to Atterbury express the utmost esteem, tenderness, 
and gratitude : perhaps, says he, it is not only in this world that I 
may have cause to remember the Bishop of Rochester. At their last 
interview in the Tower, Atterbury presented him with a Bible. 

Of the Odyssey Pope translated only twelve books ; the rest were 
the work of Broome and Fenton : the notes were written wholly 
by Broome, who was not over-liberally rewarded. The Publick 
was carefully kept ignorant of the several shares; and an account 
was subjoined at the conclusion, which is now known not to be true. 

The first copy of Pope's books, with those of Fenton, are to be 
seen in the Museum. The parts of Pope are less interlined than 
the Iliad, and the latter books of the Iliad less than the former. 
He grew dexterous by practice, and every sheet enabled him to write 
the next with more facility. The books of Fenton have very few 
alterations by the hand of Pope. Those of Broome have not been 



2l8 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

found; but Pope complained, as it is reported, that he had much 
trouble in correcting them. 

His contract with Lintot was the same as for the Iliad, except 
that only one hundred pounds were to be paid him for each volume. 
The number of subscribers was five hundred and seventy-four, 
and of copies eight hundred and nineteen ; so that his profit, when 
he had paid his assistants, was still very considerable. The work 
was finished in 1725, and from that time he resolved to make no 
more translations. 

The sale did not answer Lintot's expectation, and he then pre- 
tended to discover something of fraud in Pope, and commenced 
or threatened, a suit in Chancery. 

On the English Odyssey a criticism was published by Spence, at 
that time Prelector of Poetry at Oxford; a man whose learning 
was not very great, and whose mind was not very powerful. His 
criticism, however, was commonly just; what he thought, he 
thought rightly ; and his remarks were recommended by his coolness 
and candour. In him Pope had the first experience of a critick 
without malevolence, who thought it as much his duty to display 
beauties as expose faults; who censured with respect, and praised 
with alacrity. 

With this criticism Pope was so little offended, that he sought 
the acquaintance of the writer, who lived with him from that time 
in great familiarity, attended him in his last hours, and compiled 
memorials of his conversation. The regard of Pope recom- 
mended him to the great and powerful, and he obtained very valu- 
able preferments in the Church. 

Not long after Pope was returning home from a visit in a friend's 
coach, which, in passing a bridge, was overturned into the water; 
the windows were closed, and being unable to force them open, he 
was in danger of immediate death, when the postilion snatched 
him out by breaking the glass, of which the fragments cut two of 
his fingers in such a manner, that he lost their use. 

Voltaire, who was then in England, sent him a Letter of Conso- 
lation. He had been entertained by Pope at his table, where he 
talked with so much grossness that Mrs. Pope was driven from the 
room. Pope discovered, by a trick, that he was a spy for the Court, 
and never considered him as a man worthy of confidence. 



THE LIFE OF POPE 



219 



He soon afterwards (1727) joined with Swift, who was then in 
England, to publish three volumes of Miscellanies, in which amongst 
other things he inserted the Memoirs of a Parish Clerk, in ridicule 
of Burnet's importance in his own History, and a Debate upon 
Black and While Horses, written in all the formalities of a legal 
process by the assistance, as is said, of Mr. Fortescue, afterwards 
Master of the Rolls. Before these Miscellanies is a preface signed 
by Swift and Pope, but apparently written by Pope ; in which he 
makes a ridiculous and romantick complaint of the robberies com- 
mitted upon authors by the clandestine seizure and sale of their 
papers. He tells, in tragick strains, how the cabinets of the Sick 
and the closets of the Dead have been broke open and ransacked; 
as if those violences were often committed for papers of uncertain 
and accidental value, which are rarely provoked by real treasures ; 
as if epigrams and essays were in danger where gold and diamonds 
are safe. A cat, hunted for his musk, is, according to Pope's 
account, but the emblem of a wit winded by booksellers. 

His complaint, however, received some attestation ; for the same 
year the Letters written by him to Mr. Cromwell, in his youth, 
were sold by Mrs. Thomas to Curll, who printed them. 

In these Miscellanies was first published the Art of Sinking in 
Poetry, which, by such a train of consequences as usually passes 
in literary quarrels, gave in a short time, according to Pope's 
account, occasion to the Dunciad. 

In the following year (1728) he began to put Atterbury's advice 
in practice; and shewed his satirical powers by publishing the 
Dunciad, one of his greatest and most elaborate performances, 
in which he endeavoured to sink into contempt all the writers by 
whom he had been attacked, and some others whom he thought 
unable to defend themselves. 

At the head of the Dunces he placed poor Theobald, whom he 
accused of ingratitude ; but whose real crime was supposed to be 
that of having revised Shakespeare more happily than himself. 
This satire had the effect which he intended, by blasting the char- 
acters which it touched. Ralph, who, unnecessarily interposing 
in the quarrel, got a place in a subsequent edition, complained 
that for a time he was in danger of starving, as the booksellers 
had no longer any confidence in his capacity. 



220 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

The prevalence of this poem was gradual and slow: the plan, 
if not wholly new, was Kttle understood by common readers. 
Many of the allusions required illustration ; the names were often 
expressed only by the initial and final letters, and, if they had been 
printed at length, were such as few had known or recollected. 
The subject itself had nothing generally interesting, for whom 
did it concern to know that one or another scribbler was a dunce ? 
If therefore it had been possible for those who were attacked to 
conceal their pain and their resentment, the Dunciad might have 
made its way very slowly in the world. 

This, however, was not to be expected: every man is of im- 
portance to himself, and therefore, in his own opinion, to others; 
and, supposing the world already acquainted with all his pleasures 
and his pains, is perhaps the first to pubhsh injuries or misfortunes, 
which had never been known unless related by himself, and at 
which those that hear them will only laugh; for no man sympathises 
with the sorrows of vanity. 

The history of the Dunciad is very minutely related by Pope 
himself, in a Dedication which he wrote to Lord Middlesex in 
the name of Savage. 

'I will relate the war of the Dunces (for so it has been com- 
monly called), which began in the year 1727, and ended in 
1730. 

' When Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope thought it proper, for reasons 
specified in the Preface to their Miscellanies, to publish such 
Kttle pieces of theirs as had casually got abroad, there was added 
to them the Treatise of the Bathos, or the Art of Sinking in Poetry. 
It happened that in one chapter of this piece, the several species 
of bad poets were ranged in classes, to which were prefixed almost 
all the letters of the alphabet (the greatest part of them at random) ; 
but such was the number of poets eminent in that art, that some one 
or other took every letter to himself : all fell into so violent a fury, 
that, for half a year or more, the common newspapers (in most 
of which they had some property, as being hired writers) were 
filled with the most abusive falsehoods and scurrilities they could 
possibly devise. A Hberty no way to be wondered at in those 
people, and in those papers, that for many years, during the un- 
controuled license of the press, had aspersed almost all the great 



THE LIFE OF POPE 221 

characters of the age ; and this with impunity, their own persons 
and names being utterly secret and obscure. 

'This gave Mr. Pope the thought, that he had now some op- 
portunity of doing good, by detecting and dragging into Hght these 
common enemies of mankind; since to invahdate this universal 
slander, it sufficed to shew what contemptible men were the 
authors of it. He was not without hopes, that, by manifesting the 
dulness of those who had only malice to recommend them, either 
the booksellers would not find their account in employing them, 
or the men themselves, when discovered, want courage to proceed 
in so unlawful an occupation. This it was that gave birth to the 
Dunciad; and he thought it an happiness, that, by the late flood 
of slander on himself, he had acquired such a peculiar right over 
their names as was necessary to this design. 

'On the 1 2th of March, 1729, at St. James's, that poem was 
presented to the King and Queen (who had before been pleased 
to read it) by the right honourable Sir Robert Walpole ; and some 
days after the whole impression was taken and dispersed by several 
noblemen and persons of the first distinction. 

'It is certainly a true observation, that no people are so im- 
patient of censure as those who are the greatest slanderers, which 
was wonderfully exemplified on this occasion. On the day the 
book was first vended, a crowd of authors besieged the shop ; in- 
treaties, advices, threats of law and battery, nay cries of treason, 
were all employed to hinder the coming-out of the Dunciad : on 
the other side, the booksellers and hawkers made as great efforts 
to procure it. What could a few poor authors do against so great 
a majority as the publick ? There was no stopping a torrent with 
a finger, so out it came. 

'Many ludicrous circumstances attended it. The Dunces (for 
by this name they were called) held weekly clubs, to consult of 
hostihties against the author : one wrote a Letter to a great minister, 
assuring him Mr. Pope was the greatest enemy the government 
had; and another bought his image in clay, to execute him in 
effigy, with which sad sort of satisfaction the gentlemen were a 
little comforted. 

' Some false editions of the book having an owl in their frontis- 
piece, the true one, to distinguish it, fixed in his stead an ass laden 



222 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

with authors. Then another surreptitious one being printed with 
the same ass, the new edition in octavo returned for distinction to 
the owl again. Hence arose a great contest of booksellers against 
booksellers, and advertisements against advertisements; some 
recommending the edition of the owl, and others the edition of the 
ass; by which names they came to be distinguished, to the great 
honour also of the gentlemen of the Dunciad.' 

Pope appears by this narrative to have contemplated his victory 
over the Dunces with great exultation; and such was his delight 
in the tumult which he had raised, that for a while his natural 
sensibility was suspended, and he read reproaches and invectives 
without emotion, considering them only as the necessary effects 
of that pain which he rejoiced in having given. 

It cannot however be concealed that, by his own confession, he 
was the aggressor; for nobody believes that the letters in the 
Bathos were placed at random; and it may be discovered that, 
when he thinks himself concealed, he indulges the common vanity 
of common men, and triumphs in those distinctions which he had 
affected to despise. He is proud that his book was presented to 
the King and Queen by the right honourable Sir Robert Walpole ; 
he is proud that they had read it before; he is proud that the 
edition was taken off by the nobility and persons of the first dis- 
tinction. 

The edition of which he speaks was, I believe, that, which by 
telling in the text the names and in the notes the characters of 
those whom he had satirised, was made intelligible and diverting. 
The criticks had now declared their approbation of the plan, and 
the common reader began to like it without fear; those who were 
strangers to petty literature, and therefore unable to decipher 
initials and blanks, had now names and persons brought within 
their view; and delighted in the visible effect of those shafts of 
malice which they had hitherto contemplated, as shot into the air. 

Dennis, upon the fresh provocation now given him, renewed 
the enmity which had for a time been appeased by mutual civilities ; 
and published remarks, which he had till then suppressed, upon 
the Rape of the Lock. Many more grumbled in secret, or vented 
their resentment in the newspapers by epigrams or invectives. 

Ducket, indeed, being mentioned as loving Burnet with pious 



THE LIFE OF POPE 223 

passion, pretended that his moral character was injured, and for 
sometime declared his resolution to take vengeance with a cudgel. 
But Pope appeased him by changing pious passion to cordial 
friendship, and by a note, in which he vehemently disclaims the 
malignity of meaning imputed to the first impression. 

Aaron Hill, who was represented as diving for the prize, ex- 
postulated with Pope in a manner so much superior to all mean 
solicitation, that Pope was reduced to sneak and shuffle, sometimes 
to deny, and sometimes to apologize ; he first endeavours to wound, 
and is then afraid to own that he meant a blow. 

The Dunciad, in the complete edition, is addressed to Dr. Swift : 
of the notes, part was written by Dr. Arbuthnot, and an apologeti- 
cal Letter was prefixed, signed by Cleland, but supposed to have 
been written by Pope. 

After this general war upon dulness, he seems to have indulged 
himself awhile in tranquillity; but his subsequent productions 
prove that he was not idle. He published (1731) a poem on Taste, 
in which he very particularly and severely criticises the house, 
the furniture, the gardens, and the entertainments of Timon, a 
man of great wealth and little taste. By Timon he was universally 
supposed, and by the Earl of Burlington, to whom the poem is 
addressed, was privately said, to mean the Duke of Chandos; a 
man perhaps too much delighted with pomp and show, but of 
a temper kind and beneficent, and who had consequently the voice 
of the publick in his favour. 

A violent outcry was therefore raised against the ingratitude 
and treachery of Pope, who was said to have been indebted to 
the patronage of Chandos for a present of a thousand pounds, 
and who gained the opportunity of insulting him by the kindness 
of his invitation. 

The receipt of the thousand pounds Pope publickly denied ; but 
from the reproach which the attack on a character so amiable 
brought upon him, he tried all means of escaping. The name of 
Cleland was again employed in an apology, by which no man was 
satisfied ; and he was at last reduced to shelter his temerity behind 
dissimulation, and endeavour to make that disbelieved which he 
never had confidence openly to deny. He wrote an exculpatory 
letter to the Duke, which was answered with great magnanimity, 



224 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

as by a man who accepted his excuse without believing his pro- 
fessions. He said, that to have ridiculed his taste, or his buildings, 
had been an indifferent action in another man; but that in Pope, 
after the reciprocal kindness that had been exchanged between 
them, it had been less easily excused. 

Pope, in one of his Letters, complaining of the treatment which 
his poem had found, owns that such criticks can intimidate him, 
nay almost persuade him to write no more, which is a compliment 
this age deserves. The man who threatens the world is always 
ridiculous; for the world can easily go on without him, and in 
a short time will cease to miss him. I have heard of an idiot, 
who used to revenge his vexations by lying all night upon the 
bridge. There is nothing, says Juvenal, that a man will not be- 
lieve in his own favour. Pope had been flattered till he thought 
himself one of the moving powers in the system of life. When 
he talked of laying down his pen, those who sat round him intreated 
and implored, and self-love did not suffer him to suspect that they 
went away and laughed. 

The following year deprived him of Gay, a man whom he had 
known early, and whom he seemed to love with more tenderness 
than any other of his literary friends. Pope was now forty-four 
years old; an age at which the mind begins less easily to admit 
new confidence, and the will to grow less flexible, and when there- 
fore the departure of an old friend is very acutely felt. 

In the next year he lost his mother, not by an unexpected death, 
for she had lasted to the age of ninety-three; but she did not die 
unlamented. The filial piety of Pope was in the highest degree 
amiable and exemplary; his parents had the happiness of Hving 
till he was at the summit of poetical reputation, till he was at ease 
in his fortune, and without a rival in his fame, and found no dimi- 
nution of his respect or tenderness. Whatever was his pride, 
to them he was obedient; and whatever was his irritability, to 
them he was gentle. Life has, among its soothing and quiet com- 
forts, few things better to give than such a son. 

One of the passages of Pope's life, which seems to deser\"e some 
enquiry, was a publication of Letters between him and many of 
his friends, which falling into the hands of Curll, a rapacious book- 
seller of no good fame, were by him printed and sold. This 



THE LIFE OF POPE 22$ 

volume containing some Letters from noblemen, Pope incited a 
prosecution against him in the House of Lords for breach of 
privilege, and attended himself to stimulate the resentment of his 
friends. Curll appeared at the bar, and, knowing himself in no 
great danger, spoke of Pope with very little reverence. He has, 
said Curll, a knack at versifying, hut in prose I think myself a match 
for him. When the orders of the House were examined, none of 
them appeared to have been infringed ; Curll went away trium- 
phant, and Pope was left to seek some other remedy. 

Curll's account was, that one evening a man in a clergyman's 
gown, but with a lawyer's band, brought and offered to sale a num- 
ber of printed volumes, which he found to be Pope's epistolary 
correspondence; that he asked no name, and was told none, but 
gave the price demanded, and thought himself authorised to use 
his purchase to his own advantage. 

That Curll gave a true account of the transaction, it is reasonable 
to believe, because no falsehood was ever detected; and when 
some years afterwards I mentioned it to Lintot, the son of Bernard, 
he declared his opinion to be, that Pope knew better than any body 
else how Curll obtained the copies, because another parcel was at 
the same time sent to himself, for which no price had ever been 
demanded, as he made known his resolution not to pay a porter, 
and consequently not to deal with a nameless agent. 

Such care had been taken to make them publick, that they were 
sent at once to two booksellers; to Curll, who was likely to seize 
them as a prey, and to Lintot, who might be expected to give Pope 
information of the seeming injury. Lintot, I believe, did nothing; 
and Curll did what was expected. That to make them publick 
was the only purpose may be reasonably supposed, because the 
numbers offered to sale by the private messengers shewed that 
hope of gain could not have been the motive of the impression. 

It seems that Pope, being desirous of printing his Letters, and 
not knowing how to do, without imputation of vanity, what has 
in this country been done very rarely, contrived an appearance 
of compulsion ; that when he could complain that his Letters were 
surreptitiously published, he might decently and defensively pub- 
lish them himself. 

Pope's private correspondence, thus promulgated, filled the 
Q 



226 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

nation with praises of his candour, tenderness, and benevolence, 
the purity of his purposes, and the fidelity of his friendship. There 
were some Letters which a very good or a very wise man would 
wish suppressed; but, as they had been already exposed, it was 
impracticable now to retract them. 

From the perusal of those Letters, Mr. Allen first conceived the 
desire of knowing him; and with so much zeal did he cultivate 
the friendship which he had newly formed, that when Pope told 
his purpose of vindicating his own property by a genuine edition, 
he offered to pay the cost. 

This, however. Pope did not accept ; but in time solicited a sub- 
scription for a Quarto volume, which appeared (1737), I believe, 
with sufficient profit. In the Preface he tells that his Letters 
were reposited in a friend's library, said to be the Earl of Oxford's, 
and that the copy thence stolen was sent to the press. The story 
was doubtless received with different degrees of credit. It may 
be suspected that the Preface to the Miscellanies was written to 
prepare the publick for such an incident; and to strengthen this 
opinion, James Worsdale, a painter, who was employed in clandes- 
tine negotiations, but whose veracity was very doubtful, declared 
that he was the messenger who carried, by Pope's direction, the 
books to Curll. 

When they were thus published and avowed, as they had re- 
lation to recent facts, and persons either then living or not yet 
forgotten, they may be supposed to have found readers; but as 
the facts were minute, and the characters being either private or 
literary, were little known, or little regarded, they awakened no 
popular kindness or resentment: the book never became much 
the subject of conversation ; some read it as contemporary history, 
and some perhaps as a model of epistolary language; but those 
who read it did not talk of it. Not much therefore was added by 
it to fame or envy; nor do I remember that it produced either 
publick praise, or pubhck censure. 

It had, however, in some degree, the recommendation of novelty. 
Our language has few Letters, except those of statesmen. Howel 
indeed, about a century ago, published his Letters, which are 
commended by Morhoff, and which alone of his hundred volumes 
continue his memory. . Loveday's Letters were printed only once; 



THE LIFE OF POPE 



227 



those of Herbert and Suckling are hardly known. Mrs. Phillip's 
[Orinda^s] are equally neglected ; and those of Walsh seem written 
as exercises, and were never sent to any living mistress or friend. 
Pope's epistolary excellence had an open field ; he had no English 
rival, living or dead. 

Pope is seen in this collection as connected with the other con- 
temporary wits, and certainly suffers no disgrace in the comparison ; 
but it must be remembered, that he had the power of favouring 
himself: he might have originally had publication in his mind, 
and have written with care, or have afterwards selected those 
which he had most happily conceived, or most diligently laboured ; 
and I know not whether there does not appear something more 
studied and artificial in his productions than the rest, except one 
long Letter by Bolingbroke, composed with all the skill and in- 
dustry of a professed author. It is indeed not easy to distinguish 
affectation from habit ; he that has once studiously formed a style, 
rarely writes afterwards with complete ease. Pope may be said 
to write always with his reputation in his head; Swift perhaps 
like a man who remembered that he was writing to Pope; but 
Arbuthnot like one who lets thoughts drop from his pen as they 
rise into his mind. 

Before these Letters appeared, he published the first part of 
what he persuaded himself to think a system of Ethicks, under the 
title of an Essay on Man, which, if his Letter to Swift (of Sept. 
14, 1725) be rightly explained by the commentator, had been 
eight years under his consideration, and of which he seems to have 
desired the success with great solicitude. He had now many 
open and doubtless many secret enemies. The Dunces were yet 
smarting with the war; and the superiority which he publickly 
arrogated, disposed the world to wish his humiliation. 

All this he knew, and against all this he provided. His own 
name, and that of his friend to whom the work is inscribed, were 
in the first editions carefully suppressed; and the poem, being 
of a new kind, was ascribed to one or another, as favour determined, 
or conjecture wandered; it was given, says Warburton, to every 
man except him only who could write it. Those who like only 
when they like the author, and who are under the dominion of a 
name, condemned it; and those admired it who are willing to 



228 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

scatter praise at random, which while it is unappropriated excites 
no envy. Those friends of Pope, that were trusted with the secret, 
went about lavishing honours on the new-born poet, and hinting 
that Pope was never so much in danger from any former rival. 

To those authors whom he had personally offended, and to 
those whose opinion the world considered as decisive, and whom 
he suspected of envy or malevolence, he sent his essay as a present 
before publication, that they might defeat their own enmity by 
praises, which they could not afterwards decently retract. 

With these precautions, in 1733 was published the first part of 
the Essay on Man. There had been for some time a report that 
Pope was busy upon a System of Morality; but this design was 
not discovered in the new poem, which had a form and a title with 
which its readers were unacquainted. Its reception was not uni- 
form ; some thought it a very imperfect piece, though not without 
good lines. While the author was unknown, some, as will always 
happen, favoured him as an adventurer, and some censured him 
as an intruder; but all thought him above neglect; the sale in- 
creased, and editions were multiplied. 

The subsequent editions of the first Epistle exhibited two memo- 
rable corrections. At first, the poet and his friend 

Expatiate freely o'er this scene of man, 
A mighty maze of walks without a plan. 

For which he wrote afterwards, 

A mighty maze, hut not without a plan: 

for, if there were no plan, it was in vain to describe or trace the 
maze. 
The other alteration was of these lines: 

And spite of pride, and in thy reason^s spite, 
One truth is clear, whatever is, is right: 

but having afterwards discovered, or been shewn, that the truth 
which subsisted in spite of reason could not be very dear, he sub- 
stituted 

And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite. 



THE LIFE OF POPE 



229 



To such oversights will the most vigorous mind be liable, when 
it is employed at once upon argument and poetry. 

The second and third Epistles were published ; and Pope was, 
I believe, more and more suspected of writing them; at last, in 
1734, he avowed the fourth, and claimed the honour of a moral 
poet. 

In the conclusion it is sufficiently acknowledged, that the 
doctrine of the Essay on Man was received from Bolingbroke, 
who is said to have ridiculed Pope, among those who enjoyed his 
confidence, as having adopted and advanced principles of which 
he did not perceive the consequence, and as blindly propagating 
opinions contrary to his own. That those communications had 
been consolidated into a scheme regularly drawn, and delivered to 
Pope, from whom it returned only transformed from prose to 
verse, has been reported, but hardly can be true. The Essay 
plainly appears the f abrick of a poet : what Bolingbroke supplied 
could be only the first principles; the order, illustration, and 
embellishments must all be Pope's. 

These principles it is not my business to clear from obscurity, 
dogmatism, or falsehood ; but they were not immediately examined ; 
philosophy and poetry have not often the same readers ; and the 
Essay abounded in splendid amphfications and sparkhng sen- 
tences, which were read and admired, with no great attention to 
their ultimate purpose; its flowers caught the eye, which did not 
see what the gay foliage concealed, and for a time flourished in the 
sunshine of universal approbation. So httle was any evil tendency 
discovered, that, as innocence is unsuspicious, many read it for 
a manual of piety. 

Its reputation soon invited a translator. It was first turned into 
French prose, and afterwards by Resnel into verse. Both trans- 
lations fell into the hands of Crousaz, who first, when he had the 
version in prose, wrote a general censure, and afterwards reprinted 
Resnel's version, with particular remarks upon every paragraph. 

Crousaz was a professor of Switzerland, eminent for his treatise 
of Logick, and his Examen de Pyrrhonisme, and, however little 
known or regarded here, was no mean antagonist. His mind was 
one of those in which philosophy and piety are happily united. 
He was accustomed to argument and disquisition, and perhaps 



230 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

was grown too desirous of detecting faults ; but his intentions were 
always right, his opinions were solid, and his religion pure. 

His incessant vigilance for the promotion of piety disposed him 
to look with distrust upon all metaphysical systems of Theology, 
and all schemes of virtue and happiness purely rational: and 
therefore it was not long before he was persuaded that the posi- 
tions of Pope, as they terminated for the most part in natural 
religion, were intended to draw mankind away from revelation, 
and to represent the whole course of things as a necessary con- 
catenation of indissoluble fatality; and it is undeniable, that in 
many passages a religious eye may easily discover expressions not 
very favourable to morals, or to liberty. 

About this time Warburton began to make his appearance in 
the first ranks of learning. He was a man of vigorous faculties, 
a mind fervid and vehement, supplied by incessant and unlimited 
enquiry, with wonderful extent and variety of knowledge, which 
yet had not oppressed his imagination, nor clouded his perspicacity. 
To every work he brought a memory full fraught, together with 
a fancy fertile of original combinations, and at once exerted the 
powers of the scholar, the reasoner, and the wit. But his know- 
ledge was too multifarious to be always exact, and his pursuits 
were too eager to be always cautious. His abilities gave him an 
haughty confidence, which he disdained to conceal or mollify; 
and his impatience of opposition disposed him to treat his ad- 
versaries with such contemptuous superiority as made his readers 
commonly his enemies, and excited against the advocate the wishes 
of some who favoured the cause. He seems to have adopted the 
Roman Emperor's determination, oderint dum metuant; he used 
no allurements of gentle language, but wished to compel rather 
than persuade. 

His style is copious without selection, and forcible without 
neatness ; he took the words that presented themselves : his diction 
is coarse and impure, and his sentences are unmeasured. 

He had, in the early part of his life, pleased himself with the 
notice of inferior wits, and corresponded with the enemies of Pope. 
A Letter was produced, when he had perhaps himself forgotten it, 
in which he tells Concanen, ' Dryden I observe borrows for want 
of leisure y and Pope for want of genius: Milton out of pride, and 



THE LIFE OF POPE 23 1 

Addison out of modesty.^ And when Theobald published Shake- 
speare, in opposition to Pope, the best notes were supplied by 
Warburton. 

But the time was now come when Warburton was to change 
his opinion, and Pope was to find a defender in him who had con- 
tributed so much to the exaltation of his rival. 

The arrogance of Warburton excited against him every artifice 
of offence, and therefore it may be supposed that his union with 
Pope was censured as hypocritical inconstancy; but surely to 
think differently, at different times, of poetical merit, may be easily 
allowed. Such opinions are often admitted, and dismissed, with- 
out nice examination. Who is there that has not found reason 
for changing his mind about questions of greater importance ? 

Warburton, whatever was his motive, undertook, without solici- 
tation, to rescue Pope from the talons of Crousaz, by freeing him 
from the imputation of favouring fatality, or rejecting revelation ; 
and from month to month continued a vindication of the Essay 
on Man, in the Hterary journal of that time called The Republick 
of Letters. 

Pope, who probably began to doubt the tendency of his own 
work, was glad that the positions, of which he perceived himself 
not to know the full meaning, could by any mode of interpretation 
be made to mean well. How much he was pleased with his gra- 
tuitous defender, the following Letter evidently shews : 

'April II, 1739. 
'Sir, 

'I have just received from Mr. R. two more of your Letters. 
It is in the greatest hurry imaginable that I write this ; but I can- 
not help thanking you in particular for your third Letter, which is 
so extremely clear, short, and full, that I think Mr. Crousaz ought 
never to have another answerer, and deserved not so good an one. 
I can only say, you do him too much honour, and me too much 
right, so odd as the expression seems; for you have made my 
system as clear as I ought to have done, and could not. It is indeed 
the same system as mine, but illustrated with a ray of your own, 
as they say our natural body is the same still when it is glorified. 
I am sure I like it better than I did before, and so will every man 



232 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

else. I know I meant just what you explain ; but I did not explain 
my own meaning so well as you. You understand me as well as I 
do myself ; but you express me better than I could express myself. 
Pray accept the sincerest acknowledgements. I cannot but wish 
these Letters were put together in one Book, and intend (with your 
leave) to procure a translation of part, at least, of all of them into 
French ; but I shall not proceed a step without your consent and 
opinion, &c.' 

By this fond and eager acceptance of an exculpatory comment, 
Pope testified that, whatever might be the seeming or real import 
of the principles which he had received from Bolingbroke, he had 
not intentionally attacked religion; and Bolingbroke, if he meant 
to make him without his own consent an instrument of mischief, 
found him now engaged with his eyes open on the side of truth. 

It is known that Bolingbroke concealed from Pope his real 
opinions. He once discovered them to Mr. Hooke, who related 
them again to Pope, and was told by him that he must have mis- 
taken the meaning of what he heard; and Bolingbroke, when 
Pope's uneasiness incited him to desire an explanation, declared 
that Hooke had misunderstood him. 

Bolingbroke hated Warburton, who had drawn his pupil from 
him; and a little before Pope's death they had a dispute, from 
which they parted with mutual aversion. 

From this time Pope lived in the closest intimacy with his com- 
mentator, and amply rewarded his kindness and his zeal; for he 
introduced him to Mr. Murray, by whose interest he became 
preacher at Lincoln's Inn, and to Mr. Allen, who gave him his 
niece and his estate, and by consequence a bishoprick. When 
he died, he left him the property of his works ; a legacy which may 
be reasonably estimated at four thousand pounds. 

Pope's fondness for the Essay on Man appeared by his desire 
of its propagation. Dobson, who had gained reputation by his 
version of Prior's Solomon, was employed by him to translate it 
into Latin verse, and was for that purpose some time at Twicken- 
ham; but he left his work, whatever was the reason, unfinished; 
and, by Benson's invitation, undertook the longer task of Paradise 
Lost. Pope then desired his friend to find a scholar who should 



THE LIFE OF POPE 233 

turn his Essay into Latin prose ; but no such performance has ever 
appeared. 

Pope lived at this time among the Great, with that reception 
and respect to which his works entitled him, and which he had 
not impaired by any private misconduct or factitious partiality. 
Though Bolingbroke was his friend, Walpole was not his enemy; 
but treated him with so much consideration as, at his request, to 
solicit and obtain from the French Minister an abbey for Mr. 
Southcot, whom he considered himself as obliged to reward, by 
this exertion of his interest, for the benefit which he had received 
from his attendance in a long illness. 

It was said, that, when the Court was at Richmond, Queen 
Caroline had declared her intention to visit him. This may have 
been only a careless effusion, thought on no more : the report of 
such notice, however, was soon in many mouths; and if I do not 
forget or misapprehend Savage's account. Pope, pretending to decline 
what was not yet offered, left his house for a time, not, I suppose, 
for any other reason than lest he should be thought to stay at home 
in expectation of an honour which would not be conferred. He 
was therefore angry at Swift, who represents him as refusing the 
visits of a Queen, because he knew that what had never been 
offered, had never been refused. 

Beside the general system of morality supposed to be con- 
tained in the Essay on Man, it was his intention to write distinct 
poems upon the different duties or conditions of life ; one of which 
is the Epistle to Lord Bathurst (1733) on the Use of Riches, a piece 
on which he declared great labour to have been bestowed. 

Into this poem some incidents are historically thrown, and some 
known characters are introduced, with others of which it is difficult 
to say how far they are real or fictitious ; but the praise of Kyrl, 
the Man of Ross, deserves particular examination, who, after a 
long and pompous enumeration of his publick works and private 
charities, is said to have diffused all those blessings from five 
hundred a year. Wonders are willingly told, and willingly heard. 
The truth is, that Kyrl was a man of known integrity, and active 
benevolence, by whose solicitation the wealthy were persuaded to 
pay contributions to his charitable schemes; this influence he 
obtained by an example of liberality exerted to the utmost extent 



234 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 



of his power, and was thus enabled to give more than he had. 
This account Mr. Victor received from the minister of the place, 
and I have preserved it, that the praise of a good man being made 
more credible, may be more solid. Narrations of romantick and 
impracticable virtue will be read with wonder, but that which is 
unattainable is recommended in vain; that good may be en- 
deavoured, it must be shewn to be possible. 

This is the only piece in which the author has given a hint of 
his religion, by ridiculing the ceremony of burning the pope, and 
by mentioning with some indignation the inscription on the Monu- 
ment. 

When this poem was first published, the dialogue, having no 
letters of direction, was perplexed and obscure. Pope seems to 
have written with no very distinct idea; for he calls that an Epistle 
to Bathurst, in which Bathurst is introduced as speaking. 

He afterwards (1734) inscribed to Lord Cobham his Characters 
of Men, written with close attention to the operations of the mind 
and modifications of life. In this poem he has endeavoured to 
establish and exemplify his favourite theory of the ruling Passion, 
by which he means an original direction of desire to some particular 
object, an innate affection which gives all action a determinate 
and invariable tendency, and operates upon the whole system of 
life, either openly, or more secretly by the intervention of some 
accidental or subordinate propension. 

Of any passion, thus innate and irresistible, the existence may 
reasonably be doubted. Human characters are by no means 
constant; men change by change of place, of fortune, of acquaint- 
ance; he who is at one time a lover of pleasure, is at another a 
lover of money. Those indeed who attain any excellence, com- 
monly spend life in one pursuit ; for excellence is not often gained 
upon easier terms. But to the particular species of excellence 
men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or predominating 
humour, but by the first book which they read, some early con- 
versation which they heard, or some accident which excited ardour 
and emulation. 

It must be at least allowed that this ruling Passion, antecedent to 
reason and observation, must have an object independent of human 
contrivance ; for there can be no natural desire of artificial good. 



THE LIFE OF POPE 235 

No man therefore can be- born, in the strict acceptation, a lover 
of money; for he may be born where money does not exist; nor 
can he be born, in a moral sense, a lover of his country; for so- 
ciety, politically regulated, is a state contradistinguished from a 
state of nature; and any attention to that coalition of interests 
which makes the happiness of a country, is possible only to those 
whom enquiry and reflection have enabled to comprehend it. 

This doctrine is in itself pernicious as well as false : its tendency 
is to produce the belief of a kind of moral predestination, or over- 
ruling principle which cannot be resisted; he that admits it, is 
prepared to comply with every desire that caprice or opportunity 
shall excite, and to flatter himself that he submits only to the 
lawful dominion of Nature, in obeying the resistless authority of 
his ruling Passion. 

Pope has formed his theory with so little skill, that, in the ex- 
amples by which he illustrates and confirms it, he has confounded 
passions, appetites, and habits. 

To the Characters of Men he added soon after, in an Epistle 
supposed to have been addressed to Martha Blount, but which 
the last edition has taken from her, the Characters of Women. 
This poem, which was laboured with great dihgence, and in the 
author's opinion with great success, was neglected at its first 
publication, as the commentator supposes, because the publick 
was informed by an advertisement, that it contained no Charac- 
ter drawn from the Life; an assertion which Pope probably did 
not expect or wish to have been believed, and which he soon gave 
his readers sufficient reason to distrust, by telling them in a note, 
that the work was imperfect, because part of his subject was 
Vice too high to be yet exposed. 

The time, however, soon come, in which it was safe to display 
the Dutchess of Marlborough under the name of Atossa; and 
her character was inserted with no great honour to the writer's 
gratitude. 

He published from time to time (between 1730 and 1740) Imi- 
tations of dijfferent poems of Horace, generally with his name, 
and once, as was suspected, without it. What he was upon moral 
principles ashamed to own, he ought to have suppressed. Of 
these pieces it is useless to settle the dates, as they had seldom 



236 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

much relation to the times, and perhaps had been long in his 
hands. 

This mode of imitation, in which the ancients are familiarised, 
by adapting their sentiments to modern topicks, by making Hor- 
ace say of Shakespeare what he originally said of Ennius, and 
accommodating his satires on Pantolabus and Nomentanus to the 
flatterers and prodigals of our own time, was first practised in 
the reign of Charles the Second by Oldham and Rochester, at 
least I remember no instances more ancient. It is a kind of 
middle composition between translation and original design, 
which pleases when the thoughts are unexpectedly applicable, 
and the parallels lucky. It seems to have been Pope's favourite 
amusement; for he has carried it further than any former poet. 

He published likewise a revival, in smoother numbers, of 
Dr. Donne's Satires, which was recommended to him by the 
Duke of Shrewsbury and the Earl of Oxford. They made no 
great impression on the publick. Pope seems to have known 
their imbecility, and therefore suppressed them while he was yet 
contending to rise in reputation, but ventured them when he 
thought their deficiencies more likely to be imputed to Donne 
than to himself. 

The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, which seems to be derived in 
its first design from Boileau's Address a son Esprit, was pub- 
lished in January, 1735, about a month before the death of him to 
whom it is inscribed. It is to be regretted that either honour 
or pleasure should have been missed by Arbuthnot; a man 
estimable for his learning, amiable for his life, and venerable 
for his piety. 

Arbuthnot was a man of great comprehension, skilful in his 
profession, versed in the sciences, acquainted with ancient litera- 
ture, and able to animate his mass of knowledge by a bright and 
active imagination ; a scholar with great brilliancy of wit ; a wit, 
who, in the crowd of life, retained and discovered a noble ardour 
of religious zeal. 

In this poem Pope seems to reckon with the publick. He 
vindicates himself from censures; and with dignity, rather than 
arrogance, enforces his own claims to kindness and respect. 

Into this poem are interwoven several paragraphs which had 



THE LIFE OF POPE 237 

been before printed as a fragment, and among them the satirical 
lines upon Addison, of which the last couplet has been twice 
corrected. It was at first. 



Then, 

At last it is, 



Who would not smile if such a man there be? 
Who would not laugh if Addison were he? 

Who would not grieve if such a man there be? 
Who would not laugh if Addison were he? 



Who but must laugh if such a man there be? 
Who would not weep if Atticus were he? 

He was at this time at open war with Lord Hervey, who had 
distinguished himself as a steady adherent to the Ministry; and, 
being offended with a contemptuous answer to one of his pam- 
phlets, had summoned Pulteney to a duel. Whether he or 
Pope made the first attack, perhaps cannot now be easily known: 
he had written an invective against Pope, whom he calls. Hard 
as thy heart, and as thy birth obscure; and hints that his father 
was a hatter. To. this Pope wrote a reply in verse and prose: 
the verses are in this poem; and the prose, though it was never 
sent, is printed among his Letters, but to a cool reader of the 
present time exhibits nothing but tedious malignity. 

His last satires, of the general kind, were two Dialogues, named 
from the year in which they were published. Seventeen Hun- 
dred and Thirty-eight. In these poems many are praised and 
many are reproached. Pope was then entangled in the opposi- 
tion; a follower of the Prince of Wales, who dined at his house, 
and the friend of many who obstructed and censured the conduct 
of the Ministers. His political partiality was too plainly shewn ; 
he forgot the prudence with which he passed, in his earlier years, 
uninjured and unoffending through much more violent conflicts 
of faction. 

In the first Dialogue, having an opportunity of praising Allen 
of Bath, he asked his leave to mention him as a man not illustrious 
by any merit of his ancestors, and called him in his verses low- 
born Allen. Men are seldom satisfied with praise introduced 
or followed by any mention of defect. Allen seems not to have 



238 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

taken any pleasure in his epithet, which was afterwards soft- 
ened into humble Allen. 

In the second Dialogue he took some liberty with one of the 
Foxes, among others; which Fox, in a reply to Lyttelton, took 
an"* opportunity of repaying, by reproaching him with the friend- 
ship of a lampooner, who scattered his ink without fear or decency, 
and against whom he hoped the resentment of the Legislature 
would quickly be discharged. 

About this time Paul Whitehead, a small poet, was summoned 
before the Lords for a poem called Manners, together with Dods- 
ley, his publisher. Whitehead, who hung loose upon society, 
sculked and escaped; but Dodsley's shop and family made his 
appearance necessary. He was, however, soon dismissed; and 
the whole process was probably intended rather to intimidate 
Pope than to punish Whitehead. 

Pope never afterwards attempted to join the patriot with the 
poet, nor drew his pen upon statesmen. That he desisted from 
his attempts of reformation is imputed, by his commentator, 
to his despair of prevailing over the corruption of the time. He 
was not likely to have been ever of opinion that the dread of his 
satire would countervail the love of power or of money ; he pleased 
himself with being important and formidable, and gratified 
sometimes his pride, and sometimes his resentment; till at last 
be began to think he should be more safe, if he were less 
busy. 

The Memoirs of Scriblerus, published about this time, extend 
only to the first book of a work projected in concert by Pope, 
Swift, and Arbuthnot, who used to meet in the time of Queen 
Anne, and denominated themselves the Scriblerus Club. Their 
purpose was to censure the abuses of learning by a fictitious 
Life of an infatuated Scholar. They were dispersed; the design 
was never completed; and Warburton laments its miscarriage, 
as an event very disastrous to polite letters. 

If the whole may be estimated by this specimen, which seems 
to be the production of Arbuthnot, with a few touches perhaps 
by Pope, the want of more will not be much lamented; for the 
follies which the writer ridicules are so little practised, that they 
are not known; nor can the satire be understood but by the 



THE LIFE OP POPE 239 

learned: he raises phantoms of absurdity, and then drives them 
away. He cures diseases that were never felt. 

For this reason this joint production of three great writers 
has never obtained any notice from mankind; it has been little 
read, or when read has been forgotten, as no man could be wiser, 
better, or merrier, by remembering it. 

The design cannot boast of much originality; for, besides 
its general resemblance to Don Quixote, there will be found in 
it particular imitations of the History of Mr. Ouffle. 

Swift carried so much of it into Ireland as supplied him with 
hints for his Travels; and with those the world might have been 
contented, though the rest had been suppressed. 

Pope had sought for images and sentiments in a region not 
known to have been explored by many other of the English 
writers; he had consulted the modern writers of Latin poetry, 
a class of authors whom Boileau endeavored to bring into con- 
tempt, and who are too generally neglected. Pope, however, 
was not ashamed of their acquaintance, nor ungrateful for the 
advantages which he might have derived from it. A small selec- 
tion from the Italians who wrote in Latin had been published 
at London, about the latter end of the last century, by a man 
who concealed his name, but whom his Preface shews to have 
been well qualified for his undertaking. This collection Pope 
amplified by more than half, and (1740) pubHshed it in two 
volumes, but injuriously omitted his predecessor's preface. To 
these books, which had nothing but the mere text, no regard was 
paid, the authors were still neglected, and the editor was neither 
praised nor censured. 

He did not sink into idleness; he had planned a work, which 
he considered as subsequent to his Essay on Man, of which he 
has given this account to Dr. Swift. 

'March 25, 1736. 

'If ever I write any more Epistles in verse, one of them shall 
be addressed to you. I have long concerted it, and begun it; 
but I would make what bears your name as finished as my last 
work ought to be, that is to say, more finished than any of the 
rest. The subject is large, and will divide into four Epistles, 
which naturally follow the Essay on Man, viz. i. Of the Ex- 



240 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

tent and Limits of Human Reason and Science. 2. A View of 
the useful and therefore attainable, and of the unuseful and 
therefore unattainable, Arts. 3. Of the Nature, Ends, Applica- 
tion, and Use of different Capacities. 4. Of the Use of Learn- 
ing, of the Science, of the World, and of Wit. It will conclude 
with a satire against the Misapplication of all these, exemplified 
by Pictures, Characters, and Examples.' 

This work in its full extent, being now afflicted with an asthma 
and finding the powers of life gradually declining, he had no 
longer courage to undertake ; but, from the materials which he 
had provided, he added, at Warburton's request, another book 
to the Dunciad, of which the design is to ridicule such studies 
as are either hopeless or useless, as either pursue what is un- 
attainable, or what, if it be attained, is of no use. 

When this book was printed (1742) the laurel had been for 
some time upon the head of Cibber; a man whom it cannot be 
supposed that Pope could regard with much kindness or esteem, 
though in one of the Imitations of Horace he has liberally enough 
praised the Careless Husband. In the Dunciad, among other 
worthless scribblers, he had mentioned Cibber; who, in his 
Apology, complains of the great poet's unkindness as more in- 
jurious, because, says he, / never have offended him. 

It might have been expected that Pope should have been, in 
some degree, mollified by this submissive gentleness; but no 
such consequence appeared. Though he condescended to com- 
mend Cibber once, he mentioned him afterwards contemptu- 
ously in one of his Satires, and again in his Epistle to Arbuthnot; 
and in the fourth book of the Dunciad attacked him with acri- 
mony, to which the provocation is not easily discoverable. Perhaps 
he imagined that, in ridiculing the Laureat, he satirised those 
by whom the laurel had been given, and gratified that ambitious 
petulance with which he affected to insult the great. 

The severity of this satire left Cibber no longer any patience. 
He had confidence enough in his own powers to believe that he 
could disturb the quiet of his adversary, and doubtless did not 
want instigators, who, without any care about the victory, de- 
sired to amuse themselves by looking on the contest. He there- 
fore gave the town a pamphlet, in which he declares his resolution 



THE LIFE OF POPE 241 

from that time never to bear another blow without returning it, 
and to tire out his adversary by perseverance, if he cannot conquer 
him by strength. 

The incessant and unappeasable malignity of Pope he imputes 
to a very distant cause. After the Three Hours after Marriage 
had been driven off the stage, by the offence which the mummy 
and crocodile gave the audience, while the exploded scene was 
yet fresh in memory, it happened that Gibber played Bayes 
in the Rehearsal; and, as it had been usual to enliven the part 
by the mention of any recent theatrical transactions, he said, that 
he once thought to have introduced his lovers disguised in a 
Mummy and a Crocodile. 'This,' says he, 'was received with 
loud claps, which indicated contempt of the play.' Pope, who 
was behind the scenes, meeting him as he left the stage, attacked 
him, as he says, with all the virulence of a Wit out of his senses ; 
to which he replied, ' that he would take no other notice 
of what was said by so particular a man than to declare, 
that, as often as he played that part, he would repeat the 
same provocation.' 

He shews his opinion to be, that Pope was one of the authors 
of the play which he so zealously defended; and adds an idle 
story of Pope's behaviour at a tavern. 

The pamphlet was written with little power of thought or lan- 
guage, and, if suffered to remain without notice, would have 
been very soon forgotten. Pope had now been enough acquainted 
with human life to know, if his passion had not been too powerful 
for his understanding, that, from a contention like his with Gibber, 
the world seeks nothing but diversion, which is given at the 
expence of the higher character. When Gibber lampooned Pope, 
curiosity was excited; what Pope would say of Gibber nobody 
enquired, but in hope that Pope's asperity might betray his pain 
and lessen his dignity. 

He should therefore have suffered the pamphlet to flutter and 
die, without confessing that it stung him. The dishonour of 
being shewn as Gibber's antagonist could never be compensated 
by the victory. Gibber had nothing to lose; when Pope had 
exhausted all his malignity upon him, he would rise in the esteem 
both of his friends and his enemies. Silence only could have 



242 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

made him despicable ; the blow which did not appear to be felt 
would have been struck in vain. 

But Pope's irascibility prevailed, and he resolved to tell the 
whole English world that he was at war with Gibber; and to 
shew that he thought him no common adversary, he prepared 
no common vengeance; he published a new addition of the 
Dunciad, in which he degraded Theobald from his painful pre- 
eminence, and enthroned Gibber in his stead. Unhappily the 
two heroes were of opposite characters, and Pope was unwill- 
ing to lose what he had already written ; he has therefore depraved 
his poem by giving to Gibber the old books, the cold pedantry, 
and sluggish pertinacity of Theobald. 

Pope was ignorant enough of his own interest, to make another 
change, and introduced Osborne contending for the prize among 
the booksellers. Osborne was a man entirely destitute of shame, 
without sense of any disgrace but that of poverty. He told me, 
when he was doing that which raised Pope's resentment, that he 
should be put into the Dunciad; but he had the fate of Cassandra. 
I gave no credit to his prediction, till in time I saw it accomplished. 
The shafts of satire were directed equally in vain against Gibber and 
Osborne; being repelled by the impenetrable impudence of one, 
and deadened by the impassive dulness of the other. Pope 
confessed his own pain by his anger; but he gave no pain to those 
who had provoked him. He was able to hurt none but himself; 
by transferring the same ridicule from one to another, he destroyed 
its efficacy; for, by shewing that what he had said of one he was 
ready to say of another, he reduced himself to the insignificance of 
his own magpye, who from his cage calls cuckold at a venture. 

Gibber, according to his engagement, repaid the Dunciad with 
another pamphlet, which, Pope said, would he as good as a dose 
of hartshorn to him; but his tongue and his heart were at variance. 
I have heard Mr. Richardson relate, that he attended his father 
the painter on a visit, when one of Gibber's pamphlets came into 
the hands of Pope, who said, These things are my diversion. They 
sat by him while he perused it, and saw his features writhen with 
anguish; and young Richardson said to his father, when they 
returned, that he hoped to be preserved from such diversion as had 
been that day the lot of Pope. 



THE LIFE OF POPE 



243 



From this time, finding his diseases more oppressive, and 
his vital powers gradually declining, he no longer strained his 
faculties with any original composition, nor proposed any other 
employment for his remaining life than the revisal and correction 
of his former works; in which he received advice and assistance 
from Warburton, whom he appears to have trusted and honoured 
in the highest degree. 

He laid aside his Epick Poem, perhaps without much loss to 
mankind ; for his hero was Brutus the Trojan, who, according to a 
ridiculous fiction, established a colony in Britain. The subject 
therefore was of the fabulous age; the actors were a race upon 
whom imagination has been exhausted, and attention wearied, 
and to whom the mind will not easily be recalled, when it is invited 
in blank verse, which Pope had adopted with great imprudence, 
and, I think, without due consideration of the nature of our 
language. The sketch is, at least in part, preserved by Ruffhead ; 
by which it appears, that Pope was thoughtless enough to model 
the names of his heroes with terminations not consistent with 
the time or country in which he places them. 

He lingered through the next year; but perceived himself, 
as he expresses it, going down the hill. He had for at least five 
years been afflicted with an asthma, and other disorders, which his 
physicians were unable to relieve. Towards the end of his life 
he consulted Dr. Thomson, a man who had, by large promises, 
and free censures of the common practice of physick, forced 
himself up into sudden reputation. Thomson declared his dis- 
temper to be a dropsy, and evacuated part of the water by tincture 
of jalap; but confessed that his belly did not subside. Thomson 
had many enemies, and Pope was persuaded to dismiss him. 

While he was yet capable of amusement and conversation, as 
he was one day sitting in the air with Lord Bolingbroke and Lord 
Marchmont, he saw his favourite Martha Blount at the bottom 
of the terrace, and asked Lord Bolingbroke to go and hand her up. 
Bolingbroke, not liking his errand, crossed his legs, and sat still; 
but Lord Marchmont, who was younger and less captious, waited 
on the Lady; who, w^hen he came to her, asked. What, is he not dead 
yet ? She is said to have neglected him, with shameful unkindness, 
in the latter time of his decay; yet, of the little which he had to 



244 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

leave, she had a very great part. Their acquaintance began early; 
the life of each was pictured on the other's mind ; their conversa- 
tion therefore was endearing, for when they met, there was an 
immediate coalition of congenial notions. Perhaps he considered 
her unwillingness to approach the chamber of sickness as female 
weakness, or human frailty; perhaps he was conscious to himself 
of peevishness and impatience, or, though he was offended by 
her inattention, might yet consider her merit as overbalancing her 
fault ; and, if he had suffered his heart to be alienated from her, he 
could have found nothing that might fill her place ; he could have 
only shrunk within himself; it was too late to transfer his confi- 
dence or fondness. 

In May 1744, his death was approaching; on the sixth, he was all 
day delirious, which he mentioned four days afterwards as a suffi- 
cient humiliation of the vanity of man ; he afterwards complained 
of seeing things as through a curtain, and in false colours; and one 
day, in the presence of Dodsley, asked what arm it was that came 
out from the wall. He said that his greatest inconvenience was 
inability to think. 

Bolingbroke sometimes wept over him in this state of helpless 
decay; and being told by Spence, that Pope, at the intermission 
of his deliriousness, was always saying something kind either 
of his present or absent friends, and that his humanity seemed to 
have survived his understanding, answered. It has so. And added, 
/ never in my life knew a man that had so tender a heart for his 
particular friends, or a more general friendship for mankind. At 
another time he said, / have known Pope these thirty years, and 
value myself more in his friendship than — his grief then suppressed 
his voice. 

Pope expressed undoubting confidence of a future state. Being 
asked by his friend Mr. Hooke, a papist, whether he would not die 
like his father and mother, and whether a priest should not be called, 
he answered, / do not think it essential, hut it will he very right; 
and I thank you for putting me in mind of it. 

In the morning, after the priest had given him the last sacraments, 
he said, There is nothing that is meritorious hut virtue and friend- 
ship, and indeed friendship itself is only a part of virtue. 

He died in the evening of the thirtieth day of May, 1744, so 



THE LIFE OF POPE 



245 



placidly, that the attendants did not discern the exact time of his 
expiration. He was buried at Twickenham, near his father and 
mother, where a monument has been erected to him by his com- 
mentator, the Bishop of Gloucester. 

He left the care of his papers to his executors, first to Lord Boling- 
broke, and if he should not be living, to the Earl of Marchmont, 
undoubtedly expecting them to be proud of the trust, and eager to 
extend his fame. But let no man dream of influence beyond his 
life. After a decent time Dodsley the bookseller went to solicit 
preference as the publisher, and was told that the parcel had not 
been yet inspected; and whatever was the reason, the world has 
been disappointed of what was reserved for the next age. 

He lost, indeed, the favour of Bolingbroke by a kind of post- 
humous offence. The political pamphlet called The Patriot King 
had been put into his hands that he might procure the impression 
of a very few copies, to be distributed according to the author's 
direction among his friends, and Pope assured him that no more 
had been printed than were allowed ; but, soon after his death, the 
printer brought and resigned a complete edition of fifteen hundred 
copies, which Pope had ordered him to print, and to retain in 
secret. He kept, as was observed, his engagement to Pope better 
than Pope had kept it to his friend; and nothing was known of 
the transaction, till, upon the death of his employer, he thought 
himself obHged to deliver the books to the right owner, who, with 
great indignation, made a fire in his yard, and delivered the whole 
impression to the flames. 

Hitherto nothing had been done which was not naturally 
dictated by resentment of violated faith; resentment more 
acrimonious, as the violator had been more loved or more trusted. 
But here the anger might have stopped; the injury was private, 
and there was Httle danger from the example. 

Bolingbroke, however, was not yet satisfied; his thirst of ven- 
geance excited him to blast the memory of the man over whom 
he had wept in his last struggles ; and he employed Mallet, another 
friend of Pope, to tell the tale to the publick, with all its aggrava- 
tions. Warburton, whose heart was warm with his legacy, 
and tender by the recent separation, thought it proper for him to 
interpose; and undertook, not indeed to vindicate the action, for 



246 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

breach of trust has always something criminal, but to extenuate 
it by an apology. Having advanced, what cannot be denied, 
that moral obliquity is made more or less excusable by the motives 
that produce it, he enquires what evil purpose could have induced 
Pope to break his promise. He could not delight his vanity by 
usurping the work, which, though not sold in shops, had been 
shewn to a number more than sufficient to preserve the author's 
claim; he could not gratify his avarice, for he could not sell his 
plunder till Bolingbroke was dead; and even then, if the copy 
was left to another, his fraud would be defeated, and if left to him- 
self, would be useless. 

Warburton therefore supposes, with great appearance of reason, 
that the irregularity of his conduct proceeded wholly from his zeal 
for Bolingbroke, who might perhaps have destroyed the pamphlet, 
which Pope thought it his duty to preserve, even without its author's 
approbation. To this apology an answer was written in a Letter 
to the most impudent man living. 

He brought some reproach upon his own memory by the petulant 
and contemptuous mention made in his will of Mr. Allen, and an 
affected repayment of his benefactions. Mrs. Blount, as the known 
friend and favourite of Pope, had been invited to the house of 
Allen, where she comported herself with such indecent arrogance, 
that she parted from Mrs. Allen in a state of irreconcilable dis- 
like, and the door was for ever barred against her. This exclusion 
she resented with so much bitterness as to refuse any legacy from 
Pope, unless he left the world with a disavowal of obligation to 
Allen. Having been long under her dominion, now tottering in 
the decline of life, and unable to resist the violence of her temper, 
or, perhaps with the prejudice of a lover, persuaded that she had 
suffered improper treatment, he complied with her demand, and 
polluted his will with female resentment. Allen accepted the 
legacy, which he gave to the Hospital at Bath, observing that Pope 
was always a bad accomptant, and that if to 150/. he had put a 
cypher more, he had come nearer to the truth. 

The person of Pope is well known not to have been formed by the 
nicest model. He has, in his account of the Little Club, compared 
himself to a spider, and by another is described as protuberant 



THE LIFE OF POPE 



247 



behind and before. He is said to have been beautiful in his 
infancy ; but he was of a constitution originally feeble and weak ; 
and as bodies of a tender frame are easily distorted, his deformity 
was probably in part the effect of his application. His stature 
was so low, that, to bring him to a level with common tables, 
it was necessary to raise his seat. But his face was not displeasing, 
and his eyes were animated and vivid. 

By natural deformity, or accidental distortion, his vital functions 
were so much disordered, that his life was a long disease. His 
most frequent assailant was the headach, which he used to relieve 
by inhaling the steam of coffee, which he very frequently required. 

Most of what can be told concerning his petty peculiarities was 
communicated by a female domestick of the Earl of Oxford, who 
knew him perhaps after the middle of life. He was then so weak 
as to stand in perpetual need of female attendance; extremely 
sensible of cold, so that he wore a kind of fur doublet, under a shirt 
of a very coarse warm linen with fine sleeves. When he rose, he 
was invested in bodice made of stiff canvas, being scarce able to 
hold himself erect till they were laced, and he then put on a flannel 
waistcoat. One side was contracted. His legs were so slender, 
that he enlarged their bulk with three pair of stockings, which 
were drawn on and off by the maid; for he was not able to dress 
or undress himself, and neither went to bed nor rose without help. 
His weakness made it very difficult for him to be clean. 

His hair had fallen almost all away ; and he used to dine some- 
times with Lord Oxford, privately, in a velvet cap. His dress of 
ceremony was black with a tye-wig, and a little sword. 

The indulgence and accommodation which his sickness required, 
had taught him all the unpleasing and unsocial qualities of a valetu- 
dinary man. He expected that every thing should give way to his 
ease or humour, as a child, whose parents will not hear her cry, 
has an unresisted dominion in the nursery. 

Oest que Venfant toujours est homme, 
C'est que Vhomme est toujours enfant. 

When he wanted to sleep he nodded in company; and once slum- 
bered at his own table while the Prince of Wales was talking of 
poetry. 



248 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

The reputation which his friendship gave, procured him many 
invitations ; but he was a very troublesome inmate. He brought 
no servant, and had so many wants, that a numerous attendance 
was scarcely able to supply them. Wherever he was, he left no 
room for another, because he exacted the attention, and employed 
the activity of the whole family. His errands were so frequent and 
frivolous, that the footmen in time avoided and neglected him; 
and the Earl of Oxford discharged some of the servants for their 
resolute refusal of his messages. The maids, when they had 
neglected their business, alleged that they had been employed by 
Mr. Pope. One of his constant demands was of coffee in the 
night, and to the woman that waited on him in his chamber he 
was very burthensome: but he was careful to recompense her 
want of sleep ; and Lord Oxford's servant declared, that in a house 
where her business was to answer his call, she would not ask for 
wages. 

He had another fault, easily incident to those who, suffering much 
pain, think themselves entitled to whatever pleasures they can 
snatch. He was too indulgent to his appetite; he loved meat 
highly seasoned and of strong taste; and, at the intervals of the 
table, amused himself with biscuits and dry conserves. If he sat 
down to a variety of dishes, he would oppress his stomach with 
repletion ; and though he seemed angry when a dram was offered 
him, did not forbear to drink it. His friends, who knew the avenues 
to his heart, pampered him with presents of luxury, which he did 
not suffer to stand neglected. The death of great men is not 
always proportioned to the lustre of their hves. Hannibal, 
says Juvenal, did not perish by a javelin or a sword; the slaughters 
of Cannae were revenged by a ring. The death of Pope was im- 
puted by some of his friends to a silver sauce-pan, in which it was 
his delight to heat potted lampreys. 

That he loved too well to eat, is certain ; but that his sensuality 
shortened his life will not be hastily concluded, when it is remem- 
bered that a conformation so irregular lasted six and fifty years, 
notwithstanding such pertinacious diligence of study and medita- 
tion. 

In all his intercourse vdth mankind, he had great delight in 
artifice, and endeavoured to attain all his purposes by indirect and 



THE LIFE OF POPE 



249 



unsuspected methods. He hardly drank tea without a stratagem. 
If, at the house of his friends, he wanted any accommodation, he was 
not willing to ask for it in plain terms, but would mention it re- 
motely as something convenient; though, when it was procured, he 
soon made it appear for whose sake it had been recommended. 
Thus he teized Lord Orrery till he obtained a screen. He prac- 
tised his arts on such small occasions, that Lady Bolingbroke used 
to say, in a French phrase, that he played the politician about cab- 
bages and turnips. His unjustifiable impression of the Patriot 
King, as it can be imputed to no particular motive, must have 
proceeded from his general habit of secrecy and cunning; he 
caught an opportunity of a sly trick, and pleased himself with the 
thought of outwitting Bolingbroke. 

In familiar or convivial conversation, it does not appear that he 
excelled. He may be said to have resembled Dryden, as being 
not one that was distinguished by vivacity in company. It is 
remarkable, that, so near his time, so much should be known of 
what he has written, and so little of what he has said : traditional 
memory retains no sallies of raillery, nor sentences of observation ; 
nothing either pointed or solid, either wise or merry. One apoph- 
thegm only stands upon record. When an objection raised against 
his inscription for Shakespeare was defended by the authority of 
Patrick, he replied — horresco referens — that he would allow the 
publisher of a Dictionary to know the meaning of a single word, but 
not of two words put together. 

He was fretful, and easily displeased, and allowed himself 
to be capriciously resentful. He would sometimes leave Lord 
Oxford silently, no one could tell why, and was to be courted back 
by more letters and messages than the footmen were willing to carry. 
The table was indeed infested by Lady Mary Wortley, who was the 
friend of Lady Oxford, and who, knowing his peevishness, could 
by no intreaties be restrained from contradicting him, till their 
disputes were sharpened to such asperity, that one or the other 
quitted the house. 

He sometimes condescended to be jocular with servants or in- 
feriors ; but by no merriment, either of others or his own, was he 
ever seen excited to laughter. 

Of his domestick character, frugahty was a part eminently 



250 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

remarkable. Having determined not to be dependent, he 
determined not to be in want, and therefore wisely and 
magnanimously rejected all temptations to expence unsuitable 
to his fortune. This general care must be universally approved ; 
but it sometimes appeared in petty artifices of parsimony, 
such as the practice of writing his compositions on the back 
of letters, as may be seen in the remaining copy of the Iliad, by 
v\hich perhaps in five years five shillings were saved; or in a 
niggardly reception of his friends, and scantiness of entertain- 
ment, as, when he had two guests in his house, he would set at 
supper a single pint upon the table; and having himself taken 
two small glasses, would retire, and say. Gentlemen, I leave you 
to your wine. Yet he tells his friends, that he has a heart 
for all, a house for all, and, whatever they may think, a 
fortune for all. 

, He sometimes, however, made a splendid dinner, and is said to 
have wanted no part of the skill or elegance which such performances 
require. That this magnificence should be often displayed, that 
obstinate prudence with which he conducted his affairs would not 
permit; for his revenue, certain and casual, amounted only to 
about eight hundred pounds a year, of which, however, he declares 
himseff able to assign one hundred to charity. 

Of this fortune, which as it arose from publick approbation 
was very honourably obtained, his imagination seems to have been 
too full : it would be hard to find a man, so well entitled to notice 
by his wit, that ever delighted so much in talking of his money. 
In his Letters, and in his Poems, his garden and his grotto, his 
quincunx and his vines, or some hints of his opulence, are always 
to be found. The great topick of his ridicule is poverty ; the crimes 
with which he reproaches his antagonists are their debts, their 
habitation in the Mint, and their want of a dinner. He seems 
to be of an opinion not very uncommon in the world, that to want 
money is to want every thing. 

Next to the pleasure of contemplating his possessions, seems to 
be that of enumerating the men of high rank with whom he was 
acquainted, and whose notice he loudly proclaims not to have been 
obtained by any practices of meanness or servility ; a boast which 
was never denied to be true, and to which very few poets have ever 



THE LIFE OF POPE 



251 



aspired. Pope never set genius to sale; he never flattered those 
whom he did not love, or praised those whom he did not esteem. 
Savage however remarked, that he began a little to relax his dignity 
when he wrote a distich for his Highnesses dog. 

His admiration of the Great seems to have increased in the ad- 
vance of life. He passed over peers and statesmen to inscribe 
his Iliad to Congreve, with a magnanimity of which the praise 
had been complete, had his friend's virtue been equal to his wit. 
Why he was chosen for so great an honour, it is not now possible 
to know; there is no trace in literary history of any particular 
intimacy between them. The name of Congreve appeaic in the 
Letters among those of his other friends, but without any observ- 
able distinction or consequence. 

To his latter works, however, he took care to annex names 
dignified with titles, but was not very happy in his choice; for, 
except Lord Bathurst, none of his noble friends were such as that 
a good man would wish to have his intimacy with them known 
to posterity : he can derive little honour from the notice of Cobham, 
Burlington, or Bolingbroke. 

Of his social qualities, if an estimate be made from his Letters, an 
opinion too favourable cannot easily be formed; they exhibit a 
perpetual and unclouded effulgence of general benevolence, and 
particular fondness. There is nothing but liberality, gratitude, 
constancy, and tenderness. It has been so long said as to be com- 
monly believed, that the true characters of men may be found in 
their Letters, and that he who writes to his friend lays his heart 
open before him. But the truth is, that such were the simple 
friendships of the Golden Age, and are now the friendships only 
of children. Very few can boast of hearts which they dare lay open 
to themselves, and of which, by whatever accident exposed, 
they do not shun a distinct and continued view; and, certainly, 
what we hide from ourselves we do not shew to our friends. There 
is, indeed, no transaction which offers stronger temptations to 
fallacy and sophistication than epistolary intercourse. In the 
eagerness of conversation the first emotions of the mind often 
burst out, before they are considered; in the tumult of business, 
interest and passion have their genuine effect ; but a friendly Letter 
is a calm and deliberate performance, in the cool of leisure, in the 



252 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

stillness of solitude, and surely no man sits down to depreciate 
by design his own character. 

Friendship has no tendency to secure veracity; for by whom 
can a man so much wish to be thought better than he is, as by 
him whose kindness he desires to gain or keep ? Even in writing 
to the world there is less constraint; the author is not confronted 
with his reader, and takes his chance of approbation among the 
different dispositions of mankind; but a Letter is addressed to a 
single mind, of which the prejudices and partialities are known; 
and must therefore please, if not by favouring them, by forbearing 
to oppose them. 

To charge those favourable representations, which men give 
of their own minds, with the guilt of hypocritical falsehood, would 
shew more severity than knowledge. The writer commonly be- 
lieves himself. Almost every man's thoughts, while they are gen- 
eral, are right ; and most hearts are pure, while temptation is away. 
It is easy to awaken generous sentiments in privacy; to despise 
death when there is no danger; to glow with benevolence when 
there is nothing to be given. While such ideas are formed they 
are felt, and self-love does not suspect the gleam of virtue to be the 
meteor of fancy. 

If the Letters of Pope are considered merely as compositions, they 
seem to be premeditated and artificial. It is one thing to write 
because there is something which the mind wishes to discharge, 
and another, to solicit the imagination because ceremony or vanity 
requires something to be written. Pope confesses his early Letters 
to be vitiated with affectation and ambition : to know whether he 
disentangled himself from these perverters of epistolary integrity, 
his book and his Hfe must be set in comparison. 

One of his favourite topicks is contempt of his own poetry. 
For this, if it had been real, he would deserve no commendation ; 
and in this he was certainly not sincere, for his high value of him- 
self was sufficiently observed ; and of what could he be proud but 
of his poetry ? He writes, he says, when he has just nothing else 
to do; yet Swift complains that he was never at leisure for conversa- 
tion, because he had always some poetical scheme in his head. It 
was punctually required that his writing-box should be set upon 
his bed before he rose ; and Lord Oxford's domestick related, that, 



THE LIFE OF POPE 



253 



in the dreadful winter of Forty, she was called from her bed by 
him four times in one night, to supply him with paper, lest he should 
lose a thought. 

He pretends insensibility to censure and criticism, though it 
was observed by all who knew him that every pamphlet disturbed 
his quiet, and that his extreme irritability laid him open to per- 
petual vexation ; but he wished to despise his criticks, and therefore 
hoped that he did despise them. 

As he happened to live in two reigns when the Court paid httle 
attention to poetry, he nursed in his mind a foolish disesteem of 
Kings, and proclaims that he never sees Courts. Yet a little regard 
shewn him by the Prince of Wales melted his obduracy ; and he 
had not much to say when he was asked by his Royal Highness, 
how he could love a Prince while he disliked Kings ? 

He very frequently professes contempt of the world, and repre- 
sents himself as looking on mankind, sometimes with gay indiffer- 
ence, as on emmets of a hillock, below his serious attention ; and 
sometimes with gloomy indignation, as on monsters more worthy 
of hatred than of pity. These were dispositions apparently counter- 
feited. How could he despise those whom he lived by pleasing, 
and on whose approbation his esteem of himself was supers tructed ? 
Why should he hate those to whose favour he owed his honour and 
his ease? Of things that terminate in human Hfe, the world is 
the proper judge ; to despise its sentence, if it were possible, is not 
just; andif it were just, is not possible. Pope was far enough from 
this unreasonable temper; he was sufficiently a fool to Fame, 
and his fault was that he pretended to neglect it. His levity 
and his sullenness were only in his Letters; he passed through 
common life, sometimes vexed, and sometimes pleased, with the 
natural emotions of common men. 

His scorn of the Great is repeated too often to be real ; no man 
thinks much of that which he despises ; and as falsehood is always 
in danger of inconsistency, he makes it his boast at another time 
that he hves among them. 

It is evident that his own importance swells often in his mind. 
He is afraid of writing, lest the clerks of the Post-office should 
know his secrets; he has many enemies; he considers himself 
as surrounded by universal jealousy; after many deaths, and many 



254 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

dispersions, two or three of us, says he, may still he brought to- 
gether, not to plot, hut to divert ourselves, and the world too, if it 
pleases; and they can Hve together, and shew what friends wits 
may he, in spite of all the fools in the world. All this while it was 
likely that the clerks did not know his hand ; he certainly had no 
more enemies than a publick character like his inevitably excites, 
and with what degree of friendship the wits might live, very few 
were so much fools as ever to enquire. 

Some part of this pretended discontent he learned from Swift, 
and expresses it, I think, most frequently in his correspondence 
with him. Swift's resentment was unreasonable, but it was sin- 
cere; Pope's was the mere mimickry of his friend, a fictitious part 
which he began to play before it became him. When he was only 
twenty-five years old, he related that a glut of study and retirement 
had thrown him on the world, and that there was danger lest a glut 
of the world should throw him hack upon study and retirement. To 
this Swift answered with great propriety, that Pope had not yet 
either acted or suffered enough in the world to have become weary 
of it. And, indeed, it must be some very powerful reason that 
can drive back to solitude him who has once enjoyed the pleasures 
of society. 

In the Letters both of Swift and Pope there appears such narrow- 
ness of mind, as makes them insensible of any excellence that has 
not some affinity with their own, and confines their esteem and 
approbation to so small a number, that whoever should form his 
opinion of the age from their representation, would suppose them to 
have lived amidst ignorance and barbarity, unable to find among 
their contemporaries either virtue or intelligence, and persecuted 
by those that could not understand them. 

When Pope murmurs at the world, when he professes contempt 
of fame, when he speaks of riches and poverty, of success and dis- 
appointment, with negligent indifference, he certainly does not 
express his habitual and settled sentiments, but either wilfully 
disguises his own character, or, what is more likely, invests himself 
with temporary qualities, and sallies out in the colours of the present 
moment. His hopes and fears, his joys and sorrows, acted strongly 
upon his mind ; and if he differed from others, it was not by care- 
lessness; he was irritable and resentful; his malignity to Philips, 



THE LIFE OF POPE 



255 



whom he had first made ridiculous, and then hated for being angry, 
continued too long. Of his vain desire to make Bentley contemp- 
tible, I never heard any adequate reason. He was sometimes 
wanton in his attacks; and, before Chandos, Lady Wortley, 
and Hill, was mean in his retreat. 

The virtues which seem to have had most of his affection were 
liberality and fidelity of friendship, in which it does not appear that 
he w^as other than he describes himself. His fortune did not suffer 
his charity to be splendid and conspicuous; but he assisted Dodsley 
with a hundred pounds, that he might open a shop; and of the 
subscription of forty pounds a year that he raised for Savage, 
twenty were paid by himself. He was accused of loving money, 
but his love was eagerness to gain, not solicitude to keep it. 

In the duties of friendship he was zealous and constant; his 
early maturity of mind commonly united him with men older than 
himself, and therefore, without attaining any considerable length of 
life, he saw many companions of his youth sink into the grave ; but 
it does not appear that he lost a single friend by coldness or by in- 
jury; those who loved him once, continued their kindness. His 
ungrateful mention of Allen in his will, was the effect of his adherence 
to one whom he had known much longer, and whom he naturally 
loved with greater fondness. His violation of the trust reposed on 
him by Bolingbroke could have no motive inconsistent with the 
warmest affection ; he either thought the action so near to indiffer- 
ent that he forgot it, or so laudable that he expected his friend to 
approve it. 

It was reported, with such confidence as almost to enforce belief, 
that in the papers intrusted to his executors was found a defama- 
tory Life of Swift, which he had prepared as an instrument of 
vengeance to be used, if any provocation should be ever given. 
About this I enquired of the Earl of Marchmont, who assured me 
that no such piece was among his remains. 

The religion in which he lived and died was that of the Church of 
Rome, to which in his correspondence with Racine he professes 
himself a sincere adherent. That he was not scrupulously pious 
in some part of his life, is known by many idle and indecent applica- 
tions of sentences taken from the Scriptures; a mode of merri- 
ment which a good man dreads for its profaneness, and a witty 



256 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

man disdains for its easiness and vulgarity. But to whatever 
levities he has been betrayed, it does not appear that his principles 
were ever corrupted, or that he ever lost his belief of Revelation. 
The positions which he transmitted from Bolingbroke he seems not 
to have understood, and was pleased with an interpretation that 
made them orthodox. 

A man of such exalted superiority, and so little moderation, 
would naturally have all his delinquencies observed and aggravated : 
those who could not deny that he was excellent, would rejoice to 
find that he was not perfect. 

Perhaps it may be imputed to the unwillingness with which the 
same man is allowed to possess many advantages, that his learning 
has been depreciated. He certainly was in his early life a man of 
great literary curiosity ; and when he wrote his Essay on Criticism 
had, for his age, a very wide acquaintance with books. When he 
entered into the living world, it seems to have happened to him as 
to many others, that he was less attentive to dead masters; he 
studied in the academy of Paracelsus, and made the universe his 
favourite volume. He gathered his notions fresh from reality, 
not from the copies of authors, but the originals of Nature. Yet 
there is no reason to believe that literature ever lost his esteem; 
he always professed to love reading; and Dobson, who spent some 
time at his house translating his Essay on Man, when I asked him 
what learning he found him to possess, answered. More than I 
expected. His frequent references to history, his allusions to 
various kinds of knowledge, and his images selected from art and 
nature, with his observations on the operations of the mind and the 
modes of life, shew an intelligence perpetually on the wing, excur- 
sive, vigorous, and diligent, eager to pursue knowledge, and atten- 
tive to retain it. 

From this curiosity arose the desire of travelling, to which he 
alludes in his verses to Jervas, and which, though he never 
found an opportunity to gratify it, did not leave him till his 
life declined. 

Of his intellectual character, the constituent and fundamental 
principle was Good Sense, a prompt and intuitive perception of 
consonance and propriety. He saw immediately, of his own con- 
ceptions, what was to be chosen, and what to be rejected ; and, in 



THE LIFE OF POPE 257 

the works of others, what was to be shunned, and what was to be 
copied. 

But good sense alone is a sedate and quiescent quality, which 
manages its possessions well, but does not increase them ; it collects 
few materials for its own operations, and preserves safety, but never 
gains supremacy. Pope had likewise genius; a mind active, am- 
bitious, and adventurous, always investigating, always aspiring; 
in its widest searches still longing to go forward, in its highest 
flights still wishing to be higher; always imagining something 
greater than it knows, always endeavouring more than it can do. 

To assist these powers, he is said to have had great strength and 
exactness of memory. That which he had heard or read was not 
easily lost; and he had before him not only what his own medita- 
tion suggested, but what he had found in other writers, that might 
be accommodated to his present purpose. 

These benefits of nature he improved by incessant and unwearied 
diligence ; he had recourse to every source of intelligence, and lost 
no opportunity of information ; he consulted the living as well as the 
dead; he read his compositions to his friends, and was never 
content with mediocrity when excellence could be attained. He 
considered poetry as the business of his life, and however he might 
seem to lament his occupation, he followed it with constancy; 
to make verses was his first labour, and to mend them was his last. 

From his attention to poetry he was never diverted. If con- 
versation offered anything that could be improved, he committed 
it to paper; if a thought, or perhaps an expression more happy 
than was common, rose to his mind, he was careful to write it; an 
independent distich was preserved for an opportunity of insertion, 
and some httle fragments have been found containing Hnes, or 
parts of Hnes, to be wrought upon at some other time. 

He was one of those few whose labour is their pleasure : he was 
never elevated to negHgence, nor wearied to impatience ; he never 
passed a fault unamended by indifference, nor quitted it by despair. 
He laboured his works first to gain reputation, and afterwards to 
keep it. 

Of composition there are different methods. Some employ at 
once memory and invention, and, with little intermediate use of the 
pen, form and polish large masses by continued meditation, and 



258 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

write their productions only when, in their own opinion, they have 
completed them. It is related of Virgil, that his custom was to 
pour out a great number of verses in the morning, and pass the 
day in retrenching exuberances and correcting inaccuracies. The 
method of Pope, as may be collected from his translation, was 
to write his first thoughts in his first words, and gradually to 
amplify, decorate, rectify, and refine them. 

With such faculties, and such dispositions, he excelled every 
other writer in poetical prudence; he wrote in such a manner as 
might expose him to few hazards. He used almost always the 
same fabrick of verse; and, indeed, by those few essays which he 
made of any other, he did not enlarge his reputation. Of this uni- 
formity the certain consequence was readiness and dexterity. By 
perpetual practice, language had in his mind a systematical arrange- 
ment ; having always the same use for words, he had words so se- 
lected and combined as to be ready at his call. This increase of 
facility he confessed himself to have perceived in the progress of 
his translation. 

But what was yet of more importance, his effusions were always 
voluntary, and his subjects chosen by himself. His independence 
secured him from drudging at a task, and labouring upon a barren 
topick : he never exchanged praise for money, nor opened a shop 
of condolence or congratulation. His poems, therefore, were scarce 
ever temporary. He suffered coronations and royal marriages 
to pass without a song, and derived no opportunities from recent 
events, nor any popularity from the accidental disposition of his 
readers. He was never reduced to the necessity of soliciting the 
sun to shine upon a birthday, of calling the Graces and Virtues 
to a wedding, or of saying what multitudes have said before him. 
When he could produce nothing new, he was at liberty to be silent. 

His publications were for the same reason never hasty. He 
is said to have sent nothing to the press till it had lain two years 
under his inspection: it is at least certain, that he ventured nothing 
without nice examination. He suffered the tumult of imagination 
to subside, and the novelties of invention to grow familiar. He 
knew that the mind is always enamoured of its own productions, 
and did not trust his first fondness. He consulted his friends, 
and listened with great willingness to criticism; and, what was 



THE LIFE OF POPE 



259 



of more importance, he consulted himself, and let nothing pass 
against his own judgement. 

He professed to have learned his poetry from Dryden, whom, 
whenever an opportunity was presented, he praised through his 
whole life with unvaried liberality ; and perhaps his character may 
receive some illustration, if he be compared with his master. 

Integrity of understanding and nicety of discernment were not 
allotted in a less proportion to Dryden than to Pope. The rectitude 
of Dryden's mind was sufficiently shewn by the dismission of his 
poetical prejudices, and the rejection of unnatural thoughts and 
rugged numbers. But Dryden never desired to apply all the 
judgement that he had. He wrote, and professed to write, merely 
for the people ; and when he pleased others, he contented himself. 
He spent no time in struggles to rouse latent powers; he never 
attempted to make that better which was already good, nor often to 
mend what he must have known to be faulty. He wrote, as he 
tells us, with very little consideration ; when occasion or necessity 
called upon him, he poured out what the present moment happened 
to supply, and, when once it had passed the press, ejected it from 
his mind ; for when he had no pecuniary interest, he had no further 
solicitude. 

Pope was not content to satisfy ; he desired to excel, and therefore 
always endeavoured to do his best : he did not court the candour, 
but dared the judgement of his reader, and, expecting no in- 
dulgence from others, he shewed none to himself. He examined 
lines and words with minute and punctilious observation, and 
retouched every part with indefatigable diligence, till he had left 
nothing to be forgiven. 

For this reason he kept his pieces very long in his hands, while he 
considered and reconsidered them. The only poems which can be 
supposed to have been written with such regard to the times as 
might hasten their publication, were the two satires of Thirty-eight : 
of which Dodsley told me, that they were brought to him by the 
author, that they might be fairly copied. 'Almost every line,' he said, 
'was then written twice over; I gave him a clean transcript, which 
he sent some time afterwards to me for the press, with almost every 
line written twice over a second time.' 

His declaration, that his care for his works ceased at their 



26o SAMUEL JOHNSON 

publication, was not strictly true. His parental attention never 
abandoned them; what he found amiss in the first edition, he 
silently corrected in those that followed. He appears to have 
revised the Iliad, and freed it from some of its imperfections ; and 
the Essay on Criticism received many improvements after its first 
appearance. It will seldom be found that he altered without add- 
ing clearness, elegance, or vigour. Pope had perhaps the judge- 
ment of Dryden ; but Dryden certainly wanted the diligence of Pope. 

In acquired knowledge, the superiority must be allowed to 
Dryden, whose education was more scholastick, and who before he 
became an author had been allowed more time for study, with better 
means of information. His mind has a larger range , and he collects 
his images and illustrations from a more extensive circumfer- 
ence of science. Dryden knew more of man in his general 
nature, and Pope in his local manners. The notions of Dryden 
were formed by comprehensive speculation, and those of Pope by 
minute attention. There is more dignity in the knowledge of 
Dryden, and more certainty in that of Pope. 

Poetry was not the sole praise of either ; for both excelled like- 
wise in prose ; but Pope did not borrow his prose from his prede- 
cessor. The style of Dryden is capricious and varied; that of 
Pope is cautious and uniform. Dryden obeys the motions of his 
own mind; Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of compo- 
sition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid ; Pope is always 
smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden's page is a natural field, 
rising into inequalities, and diversified by the varied exuberance 
of abundant vegetation ; Pope's is a velvet lawn, shaven by the 
scythe, and levelled by the roller. 

Of genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality 
without which judgement is cold and knowledge is inert; that 
energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates; the su- 
periority must, with some hesitation, be allowed to Dryden. It is 
not to be inferred that of this poetical vigour Pope had only a little, 
because Dryden had more ; for every other writer since Milton 
must give place to Pope ; and even of Dryden it must be said, 
that if he has brighter paragraphs, he has not better poems. 
Dryden's performances were always hasty, either excited by some 
external occasion, or extorted by domestick necessity; he com- 



THE LIFE OF POPE 261 

posed without consideration, and published without correction. 
What his mind could supply at call, or gather in one excursion, 
was all that he sought, and all that he gave. The dilatory- 
caution of Pope enabled him to condense his sentiments, to mul- 
tiply his images, and to accumulate all that study might pro- 
duce, or chance might supply. If the flights of Dryden there- 
fore are higher. Pope continues longer on the wing. If of 
Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope's the heat is more 
regular and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and 
Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read with frequent aston- 
ishment, and Pope with perpetual delight. 

This parallel will, I hope, when it is well considered, be found 
just; and if the reader should suspect me, as I suspect myself, of 
some partial fondness for the memory of Dryden, let him not too 
hastily condemn me; for meditation and enquiry may, perhaps, 
shew him the reasonableness of my determination. 



JAMES BOSWELL 

THE MEETING OF DR. JOHNSON AND WILKES 

[From The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 1791. Edited by G. B. Hill, 
Vol. Ill, pp. 64-79, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1887. 

For the Life of Johnson, see post, p. 439. • 

"The Life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is 
not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakspeare is not more decidedly 
the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, 
than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second. He has dis- 
tanced all his competitors so decidedly that it is not worth while to place 
them. Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere." — Thomas Babington 
Macaulay, "Samuel Johnson," 183 1, in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. 

"Consider too, with what force, diligence and vivacity he has rendered 
back all this which, in Johnson's neighbourhood his 'open sense' had so 
eagerly and freely taken in. That loose-flowing, careless-looking Work of 
his is as a picture by one of Nature's own Artists; the best possible resem- 
blance of a Reality; like the very image thereof in a clear mirror. Which 
indeed it was: let but the mirror be clear, this is the great point; the picture 
must and will be genuine. How the babbling Bozzy, inspired only by love, 
and the recognition and vision which love can lend, epitomises nightly the 
words of Wisdom, the deeds and aspects of Wisdom, and so, by little and 
little, unconsciously works together for us a whole J ohnsoniad ; a more free, 



262 JAMES BOSWELL 

perfect, sunlit and spirit-speaking likeness, than for many centuries had been 
drawn by man of man ! Scarcely since the days of Homer has the feat been 
equalled; indeed, in many senses, this also is a kind of Heroic Poem. The 
fit Odyssey of our unheroic age was to be written, not sung; of a Thinker, 
not of a Fighter; and (for want of a Homer) by the first open soul that might 
offer, — looked such even through the organs of a Boswell. We do the 
man's intellectual endowment great wrong, if we measure it by its mere 
logical outcome; though here too, there is not wanting a light ingenuity, a 
figurativeness and fanciful sport, with glimpses of insight far deeper than the 
common. But Boswell's grand intellectual talent was, as such ever is, an 
unconscious one, of far higher reach and significance than Logic ; and showed 
itself in the whole, not in parts. Here again we have that old saying verified, 
'The heart sees farther than the head.' " — Thomas Carlyle, "Boswell's 
Life of Johnson," 1832, in Critical and Miscellaneous Essay s.\ 

I am now to record a very curious incident in Dr. Johnson's 
life, which fell under my own observation; of which pars magna 
fui, and which I am persuaded will, with the liberal-minded, 
be much to his credit. 

My desire of being acquainted with celebrated men of every 
description, had made me, much about the same time, obtain 
an introduction to Dr. Samuel Johnson and to John Wilkes, 
Esq. Two men more different could perhaps not be selected out 
of all mankind. They had even attacked one another with 
some asperity in their writings; yet I Hved in habits of friend- 
ship with both. I could fully relish the excellence of each; for 
I have ever delighted in that intellectual chymistry, which can 
separate good qualities from evil in the same person. 

Sir John Pringle, "mine own friend and my Father's friend," 
between whom and Dr. Johnson I in vain wished to establish an 
acquaintance, as I respected and lived in intimacy with both 
of them, observed to me once, very ingeniously, ''It is not in 
friendship as in mathematicks, where two things, each equal to 
a third, are equal between themselves. You agree with Johnson 
as a middle quality, and you agree with me as a middle quality; 
but Johnson and I should not agree." Sir John was not sufficiently 
flexible; so I desisted; knowing, indeed, that the repulsion was 
equally strong on the part of Johnson; who, I know not from 
what cause, unless his being a Scotchman, had formed a very 
erroneous opinion of Sir John. But I conceived an irresistible 
wish, if possible, to bring Dr. Johnson and Mr. Wilkes together. 
How to manage it, was a nice and difficult matter. 



THE MEETING OF DR. JOHNSON AND WILKES 263 

My worthy booksellers and friends, Messieurs Dilly in the 
Poultry, at whose hospitable and well-covered table I have seen 
a greater number of literary men, than at any other, except that 
of Sir Joshua Reynolds, had invited me to meet Mr. Wilkes and 
some more gentlemen, on Wednesday, May 15. ''Pray (said 
I,) let us have Dr. Johnson." — ''What with Mr. Wilkes? not 
for the world, (said Mr. Edward Dilly ;) Dr. Johnson would never 
forgive me." — "Come, (said I,) if you'll let me negociate for you, 
I will be answerable that all shall go well." Dilly. "Nay, if 
you will take it upon you, I am sure I shall be very happy to see 
them both here." 

Notwithstanding the high veneration which I entertained for 
Dr. Johnson, I was sensible that he was sometimes a little actu- 
ated by the spirit of contradiction, and by means of that I hoped 
I should gain my point. I was persuaded that if I had come 
upon him with a direct proposal, "Sir, will you dine in company 
with Jack Wilkes?" he would have flown into a passion, and 
would probably have answered, " Dine with Jack Wilkes, Sir ! 
I'd as soon dine with Jack Ketch." ^ I therefore, while we 
were sitting quietly by ourselves at his house in an evening, took 
occasion to open my plan thus: — "Mr. Dilly, Sir, sends his 
respectful compliments to you, and would be happy if you would 
do him the honour to dine with him on Wednesday next along 
with me, as I must soon go to Scotland." Johnson. "Sir, 
I am obliged to Mr. Dilly. I will wait upon him — " Boswell. 
"Provided, Sir, I suppose, that the company which he is to 
have, is agreeable to you." Johnson. "What do you mean. 
Sir? What do you take me for? Do you think I am so 
ignorant of the world, as to imagine that I am to prescribe to a 
gentleman what company he is to have at his table ? " Boswell. 
"I beg your pardon, Sir, for wishing to prevent you from meeting 
people whom you might not like. Perhaps he may have some of 
what he calls his patriotick friends with him." Johnson. "Well, 
Sir, and what then ? What care / for his patriotick friends ? Poh ! " 
Boswell. "I should not be surprized to find Jack Wilkes there." 
Johnson. "And if Jack Wilkes should be there, what is that to 

* This has been circvdated as if actual!}'' said by Johnson; when the trutb is, 't 
was only supposed by me. — B. 



264 JAMES BOSWELL 

me, Sir? My dear friend, let us have no more of this. I am 
sorry to be angry with you ; but really it is treating me strangely 
to talk to me as if I could not meet any company whatever, occa- 
sionally. " BoswELL. ''Pray, forgive me, Sir: I meant well. But 
you shall meet whoever comes, for me." Thus I secured him, and 
told Dilly that he would find him very well pleased to be one of 
his guests on the day appointed. 

Upon the much-expected Wednesday, I called on him about 
half an hour before dinner, as I often did when we were to dine 
out together, to see that he was ready in time, and to accompany 
him. I found him buffeting his books, as upon a former occasion, 
covered with dust, and making no preparation for going abroad. 
"How is this, Sir? (said I). Don't you recollect that you are to 
dine at Mr. Dilly's?" Johnson. "Sir, I did not think of going 
to Dilly's : it went out of my head. I have ordered dinner at home 
with Mrs. Williams." Boswell. "But, my dear Sir, you know 
you were engaged to Mr. Dilly, and I told him so. He will expect 
you, and will be much disappointed if you don't come. " Johnson. 
" You must talk to Mrs. Williams about this. " 

Here was a sad dilemma. I feared that what I was so confident I 
had secured, would yet be frustrated. He had accustomed himself to 
shew Mrs. Williams such a degree of humane attention, as frequently 
imposed some restraint upon him; and I knew that if she should 
be obstinate, he would not stir. I hastened down stairs to the 
blind lady's room, and told her I was in great uneasiness, for Dr. 
Johnson had engaged to me to dine this day at Mr. Dilly's, but 
that he had told me he had forgotten his engagement, and had 
ordered dinner at home. "Yes, Sir, (said she, pretty peevishly,) 
Dr. Johnson is to dine at home. " — " Madam, (said I,) his respect for 
you is such, that I know he will not leave you, unless you absolutely 
desire it. But as you have so much of his company, I hope you will 
be good enough to forego it for a day : as Mr. Dilly is a very worthy 
man, has frequently had agreeable parties at his house for Dr. 
Johnson, and will be vexed if the Doctor neglects him to-day. 
And then. Madam, be pleased to consider my situation ; I carried 
the message, and I assured Mr. Dilly that Dr. Johnson was to 
come, and no doubt he has made a dinner, and invited a company, 
and boasted of the honour he expected to have. I shall be quite 



THE MEETING OF DR. JOHNSON AND WILKES 265 

disgraced if the Doctor is not there." She gradually softened to 
my solicitations, which were certainly as earnest as most entreaties 
to ladies upon any occasion, and was graciously pleased to empower 
me to tell Dr. Johnson, " That all things considered, she thought 
he should certainly go." I flew back to him, still in dust, and 
careless of what should be the event, "indifferent in his choice to 
go or stay; " but as soon as I had announced to him Mrs. Williams's 
consent, he roared, " Frank, a clean shirt, " and was very soon drest. 
When I had him fairly seated in a hackney-coach with me, I exulted 
as much as a fortune-hunter who has got an heiress into a post- 
chaise with him to set out for Gretna-Green. 

When we entered Mr. Dilly's drawing-room, he found himself in 
the midst of a company he did not know. I kept myself snug and 
silent, watching how he would conduct himself. I observed him 
whispering to Mr. Dilly, "Who is that gentleman, sir?" — "Mr. 
Arthur Lee." — Johnson. "Too, too, too," (under his breath,) 
which was one of his habitual mutterings. Mr. Arthur Lee could 
not but be very obnoxious to Johnson, for he was a not only a patriot, 
but an American. He was afterwards minister from the United 
States at the court of Madrid. " And who is the gentleman in lace ? " 
— "Mr Wilkes, Sir." This information confounded him still 
more ; he had some difficulty to restrain himself, and taking up a 
book, sat down upon a window-seat and read, or at least kept his 
eye upon it intently for some time, till he composed himself. His 
feelings, I dare say, were aukward enough. But he no doubt 
recollected his having rated me for supposing that he could be at 
all disconcerted by any company, and he, therefore, resolutely set 
himself to behave quite as an easy man of the world, who could 
adapt himself at once to the disposition and manners of those whom 
he might chance to meet. 

The cheering sound of "Dinner is upon the table," dissolved 
his reverie, and we all sat down without any sympton of ill humour. 
There were present, beside Mr. Wilkes, and Mr. Arthur Lee, who 
was an old companion of mine when he studied physick at Edin- 
burgh, Mr. (now Sir John) Miller, Dr. Lettsom, and Mr. Slater, 
the druggist. Mr. Wilkes placed himself next to Dr. Johnson, 
and behaved to him with so much attention and politeness, that he 
gained upon him insensibly. No man eat more heartily than 



266 JAMES BOSWELL 

Johnson, or loved better what was nice and delicate. Mr. Wilkes 
was very assiduous in helping him to some fine veal. " Pray give 
me leave. Sir; — It is better here — A little of the brown — Some fat, 
Sir — A little of the stuffing — Some gravy — Let me have the 
pleasure of giving you some butter — Allow me to recommend a 
squeeze of this orange ; — or the lemon, perhaps, may have more 
zest. " — " Sir, Sir, I am obliged to you. Sir, " cried Johnson, bowing, 
and turning his head to him with a look for some time of " surly 
virtue," ^ but, in a short while, of complacency. 

Foote being mentioned, Johnson said," He is not a good mimick. " 
One of the company added, "A merry Andrew, a buffoon." 
Johnson. " But he has wit too, and is not deficient in ideas, or in 
fertility and variety of imagery, and not empty of reading; he 
has knowledge enough to fill up his part. One species of wit he 
has in an eminent degree, that of escape. You drive him into a 
corner with both hands ; but he's gone, Sir, when you think you 
have got him — like an animal that jumps over your head. Then 
he has a great range for wit ; he never lets truth stand between him 
and a jest, and he is sometimes mighty coarse. Garrick is under 
many restraints from which Foote is free. " Wilkes. " Garrick's 
wit is more like Lord Chesterfield's. " Johnson. " The first time I 
was in company with Foote was at Fitzherbert's. Having no good 
opinion of the fellow, I was resolved not to be pleased ; and it is very 
difficult to please a man against his will. I went on eating my dinner 
pretty sullenly, affecting not to mind him. But the dog was so 
very comical, that I was obliged to lay down my knife and fork, 
throw myself back upon my chair, and fairly laugh it out. No, 
Sir, he was irresistible.^ He upon one occasion experienced, in an 
extraordinary degree, the efficacy of his powers of entertaining. 
Amongst the many and various modes which he tried of getting 
money, he became a partner with a small-beer brewer, and he was 
to have a share of the profits for procuring customers amongst his 
numerous acquaintance. Fitzherbert was one who took his small- 
beer; but it was so bad that the servants resolved not to drink it. 
They were at some loss how to notify their resolution, being afraid 
of offending their master, who they knew liked Foote much as a 

^ Johnson's "London, a Poem," v. 145. 

2 Foote told me, that Johnson said of him, "For loud obstreperous broad- 
faced mirth I know not his equal." — B. 



THE MEETING OF DR. JOHNSON AND WILKES 267 

companion. At last they fixed upon a little black boy, who was 
rather a favourite, to be their deputy, and deliver their remonstrance ; 
and having invested him with the whole authority of the kitchen, he 
was to inform Mr. Fitzherbert, in all their names, upon a certain 
day, that they would drink Foote's small-beer no longer. On 
that day Foote happened to dine at Fitzherbert's, and this boy 
served at table; he was so delighted with Foote's stories, and 
merriment, and grimace, that when he went down stairs, he 
told them, ' This is the finest man I have ever seen. I will not 
deliver your message. I will drink his small-beer.'" 

Somebody observed that Garrick could not have done this. 
Wilkes. ''Garrick would have made the small-beer still smaller. 
He is now leaving the stage; but he will play Scrub all his life." 
I knew that Johnson would let nobody attack Garrick but him- 
self, as Garrick once said to me, and I had heard him praise his 
liberality; so to bring out his commendation of his celebrated 
pupil, I said, loudly, "I have heard Garrick is liberal," John- 
son. "Yes, Sir, I know that Garrick has given away more 
money than any man in England that I am acquainted with, and 
that not from ostentatious views. Garrick was very poor when 
he began life ; so when he came to have money, he probably was 
very unskilful in givifig away, and saved when he should not. 
But Garrick began to be liberal as soon as he could; and I am 
of opinion, the reputation of avarice which he has had, has been 
very lucky for him, and prevented his having many enemies. 
You despise a man for avarice, but do not hate him. Garrick 
might have been much better attacked for living with more splen- 
dour than is suitable to a player: if they had had the wit to have 
assaulted him in that quarter, they might have galled him more. 
But they have kept clamouring about his avarice, which has 
rescued him from much obloquy and envy." 

Talking of the great difficulty of obtaining authentick infor- 
mation for biography, Johnson told us, ''When I was a young 
fellow I wanted to write the Life of Dryden and in order to 
get materials, I applied to the only two persons then alive who 
had seen him ; these were old Swinney ^ and old Gibber. Swin- 

^ [Owen M'Swinney, who died in 1745, and bequeathed his fortune to Mrs. 
Woffington, the actress. He had been a Manager of Drury Lane Theatre, and 



268 JAMES BOSWELL 

ney's information was no more than this, 'That at Will's coffee- 
house Dryden had a particular chair for himself, which was set 
by the fire in winter, and was then called his winter-chair; and 
that it was carried out for him to the balcony in summer, and 
was then called his summer-chair.' Gibber could tell no more 
but 'That he remembered him a decent old man, arbiter of critical 
disputes at Will's.' You are to consider that Gibber was then 
at a great distance from Dryden, had perhaps one leg only in 
the room, and durst not draw in the other." Boswell. "Yet 
Gibber was a man of observation ? " Johnson. "I think not." 
Boswell. ''You will allow his Apology to be well done." 
Johnson. "Very well done, to be sure. Sir. That book is 
a striking proof of the justice of Pope's remark: 

'Each might his several province well command, 
Would all but stoop to what they understand.' " 

Boswell. "And his plays are good." Johnson. "Yes; but 
that was his trade; Vesprit du corps; he had been all his life 
among players and play-writers. I wondered that he had so 
little to say in conversation, for he had kept the best company, 
and learnt all that can be got by the ear. He abused Pindar to 
me, and then shewed me an ode of his own, with an absurd 
couplet, making a linnet soar on an eagle's wing. I told him that 
when the ancients made a simile, they always made it like some- 
thing real." 

Mr. Wilkes remarked, that "among all the bold flights of 
Shakspeare's imagination, the boldest was making Birnam- 
wood march to Dunsinane; creating a wood where there never 
was a shrub; a wood in Scotland! ha! ha! ha!" And he 
also observed, that "the clannish slavery of the Highlands of 
Scotland was the single exception to Milton's remark of 'The 
Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty,' being worshipped in all hilly 
countries." — "When I was at Inverary (said he), on a visit to my 
old friend Archibald, Duke of Argyle, his dependents congrat- 
ulated me on being such a favourite of his Grace. I said, 'It 

afterwards of the Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket. He was also a dramatic 
writer, having produced a comedy entitled — "The Quack's, or Love's the Physi- 
cian," 1705, and two operas. — M.] 



THE MEETING OF DR. JOHNSON AND WILKES 269 

is then, gentlemen, truly lucky for me; for if I had displeased 
the Duke, and he had wished it, there is not a Campbell among 
you but would have been ready to bring John Wilkes's head to 
him in a charger. It would have been only 

'Off with his head! so much for Aylesbury.* 

I was then member for Aylesbury." 

Dr. Johnson and Mr. Wilkes talked of the contested passage 
in Horace's Art of poetry, ^^ Difficile est proprie communia dicer e.^^ 
Mr. Wilkes, according to my note, gave the interpretation thus: 
''It is difficult to speak with propriety of common things; as, if 
a poet had to speak of Queen Caroline drinlcing tea, he must 
endeavour to avoid the vulgarity of cups and saucers." But 
upon reading my note, he tells me that he meant to say, that 
''the word communia, being a Roman law-term, signifies here 
things communis juris, that is to say, what have never yet been 
treated by any body ; and this appears clearly from what followed. 

Tuque 



Rectius Iliacum carmen deducis in actus 
Quam si proferres ignota indictaque primus.' 

You will easier make a tragedy out of the Iliad than on any 
subject not handled before." Johnson. "He means that it 
is difficult to appropriate to particular persons qualities which 
are common to all mankind, as Homer has done." 

Wilkes. "We have no City-Poet now: that is an office 
which has gone into disuse. The last was Elkanah Settle. There 
is something in names which one cannot help feeling. Now 
Elkanah Settle sounds so queer, who can expect much from that 
name ? We should have no hesitation to give it for John Dryden, 
in preference to Elkanah Settle, from the names only, without 
knowing their different merits." Johnson. "I suppose. Sir, 
Settle did as well for Aldermen in his time, as John Home could 
do now. Where did Beckford and Trecothick learn English ?" 

Mr. Arthur Lee mentioned some Scotch who had taken pos- 
session of a barren part of America, and wondered why they 
should choose it. Johnson. "Why, Sir, all barrenness is 
comparative. The Scotch would not know it to be barren." 



270 JAMES BOS WELL 

BoswELL. ''Come, come, he is flattering the English. You have 
now been in Scotland, Sir, and say if you did not see meat and 
drink enough there." Johnson. "Why yes. Sir; meat and 
drink enough to give the inhabitants sufficient strength to run 
away from home." All these quick and lively sallies were said 
sportively, quite in jest, and with a smile, which showed that 
he meant only wit. Upon this topick he and Mr. Wilkes could 
perfectly assimilate; here was a bond of union between them, 
and I was conscious that as both of them had visited Caledonia, 
both were fully satisfied of the strange narrow ignorance of those 
who imagine that it is a land of famine. But they amused them- 
selves with persevering in the old jokes. When I claimed a 
superiority for Scotland over England in one respect, that no 
man can be arrested there for a debt merely because another 
swears it against him; but there must first be the judgment of 
a court of law ascertaining its justice ; and that a seizure of the 
person, before judgment is obtained, can take place only, if his 
creditor should swear that he is about to fly from the country, 
or, as it is technically expressed, is in meditatione fugce : Wilkes. 
"That, I thould think, may be safely sworn of all the Scotch 
nation." Johnson. (To Mr. Wilkes) "You must know, Sir, 
I lately took my friend Boswell, and shewed him genuine civil- 
ized life in an English provincial town. I turned him loose at 
Lichfield, my native city, that he might see for once real civility: 
for you know he lives among savages in Scotland, and among 
rakes in London." Wilkes. "Except when he is with grave, 
sober, decent people, like you and me." Johnson, (smiling) 
"And we ashamed of him." 

They were quite frank and easy. Johnson told the story of 
his asking Mrs. Macaulay to allow her footman to sit down with 
them, to prove the ridiculousness of the arguments for the equality 
of mankind; and he said to me afterwards, with a nod of sat- 
isfaction, "You saw Mr. Wilkes acquiesced." Wilkes talked 
with all imaginable freedom of the ludicrous title given to the 
Attorney-General, Diaholus Regis; adding, "I have reason to 
know something about that officer; for I was prosecuted for a 
libel." Johnson, who many people would have supposed must 
have been furiously angry at hearing this talked of so lightly, said 



THE MEETING OF DR. JOHNSON AND WILKES 271 

not a word. He was now, indeed, ''a good-humoured fellow." 

After dinner we had an accession of Mrs. Knowles, the Quaker 
lady, well known for her various talents, and of Mr. Alderman 
Lee. Amidst some patriotick groans, somebody (I think the 
Alderman) said, ''Poor old England is lost." Johnson. "Sir, 
it is not so much to be lamented that old England is lost, as that 
the Scotch have found it."^ Wilkes. ''Had Lord Bute gov- 
erned Scotland only, I should not have taken the trouble to write 
his eulogy, and dedicate Mortimer to him." 

Mr. Wilkes held a candle to shew a fine print of a beautiful 
female figure which hung in the room, and pointed out the elegant 
contour of the bosom with the finger of an arch connoisseur. 
He afterwards, in a conversation with me, waggishly insisted, that 
all the time Johnson shewed visible signs of a fervent admiration 
of the corresponding charms of the fair Quaker. 

This record, though by no means so perfect as I could wish, 
will serve to give a notion of a very curious interview, which 
was not only pleasing at the time, but had the agreeable and 
benignant effect of reconciling any animosity, and sweetening 
any acidity, which, in the various bustle of political contest, had 
been produced in the minds of two men, who though widely 
different, had so many things in common — classical learning, 
modern literature, wit and humour, and ready repartee — that 
it would have been much to be regretted if they had been for 
ever at a distance from each other. 

Mr. Burke gave me much credit for this successful negocia- 
tion; and pleasantly said, that "there was nothing equal to it 
in the whole history of the Corps Diplomatique.^^ 

I attended Dr. Johnson home, and had the satisfaction to 
hear him tell Mrs. WilHams how much he had been pleased 
with Mr. Wilkes's company, and what an agreeable day he had 
passed. 

1 It woiald not become me to expatiate on this strong and pointed remark, in 
which a very geat deal of meaning is condensed. — B. 



272 ROBERT SOUTH EY 

ROBERT SOUTHEY 

THE DEATH OF NELSON 

[From The Life of Horatio, Lord Nelson^ Chap. ix. 1813. John Murray, 

London. 

"Though in general we prefer Mr. Southey's poetry to his prose, we must 
make one exception. The Life of Nelson is, beyond all doubt, the most per- 
fect and the most delightful of his works. The fact is, as his poems most 
abundantly prove, that he is by no means so skilful in designing as in filling 
up. It was therefore an advantage to him to be furnished with an outline 
of characters and events, and to have no other task to perform than that of 
touching the cold sketch into life. No writer, perhaps, ever lived, whose 
talents so precisely qualified him to write the history of the great naval war- 
rior. There were no fine riddles of the human heart to read, no theories to 
propound, no hidden causes to develop, no remote consequences to predict. 
The character of the hero lay on the surface. The exploits were brilliant 
and picturesque. The necessity of adhering to the real course of events 
saved Mr. Southey from those faults which deform the original plan of 
almost every one of his poems, and which even his innumerable beauties of 
detail scarcely redeem. The subject did not require the exercise of those 
reasoning powers the want of which is the blemish of his prose. It would 
not be easy to find, in all literary history, an instance of a more exact hit 
between wind and water." — Thomas Babington Macaulay, "Southey's 
Colloquies," 1830, in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays.] 

At daybreak the combined fleets ^ were distinctly seen from 
the Victory^ s"^ deck, formed in a close line of battle ahead, on 
the starboard tack, about twelve miles to leeward, and standing to 
the south. Our fleet consisted of twenty-seven sail of the line 
and four frigates; theirs of thirty-three, and seven large frigates. 
Their superiority was greater in size, and weight of metal, than in 
numbers. They had four thousand troops on board; and the 
best riflemen who could be procured, many of them Tyrolese, 
were dispersed through the ships. Little did the Tyrolese, and 
little did the Spaniards, at that day, imagine what horrors the 
wicked tyrant whom they served was preparing for their country ! 

Soon after daylight Nelson came upon deck. The 2rst of 
October^ was a festival in his family; because on that day his 
uncle. Captain Suckling, in the Dreadnought, with two other 
line of battle ships, had beaten off a French squadron of four 
sail of the line and three frigates. Nelson, with that sort of 

1 French and Spanish. ^ Nelson's flagship. ^ 1805. 



THE DEATH OF NELSON 



273 



superstition from which few persons are entirely exempt, had 
more than once expressed his persuasion that this was to be 
the day of his battle also; and he was well pleased at seeing his 
prediction about to be verified. The wind was now from the 
west, — hght breezes, with a long heavy swell. Signal was made 
to bear down upon the enemy in two lines; and the fleet set all 
sail. Collingwood, in the Royal Sovereign, led the lee-line of 
thirteen ships ; the Victory led the weather-line of fourteen. Hav- 
ing seen that all was as it should be, Nelson retired to his cabin, 
and wrote this prayer : — 

'May the Great God, whom I worship, grant to my country, 
and for the benefit of Europe in general, a great and glorious 
victory; and may no misconduct in any one tarnish it; and may 
humanity after victory be the predominant feature in the British 
fleet ! For myself individually, I commit my life to Him that 
made me, and may His blessing alight on my endeavours for 
serving my country faithfully ! To Him I resign myself, and 
the just cause which is intrusted to me to defend. Amen, Amen, 
Amen.' 

^lu «|^ «jw »f« ^t^ ^If ^Sf 

Blackwood went on board the Victory about six. He found 
him in good spirits, but very calm; not in that exhilaration which 
he had felt upon entering into battle at Aboukir and Copen- 
hagen ; he knew that his own life would be particularly aimed at, 
and seems to have looked for death with almost as sure an expec- 
tation as for victory. His whole attention was fixed upon the 
enemy. They tacked to the northward, and formed their 
line on the larboard tack; thus bringing the shoals of Trafalgar 
and St. Pedro under the lee of the British, and keeping the port 
of Cadiz open for themselves. This was judiciously done: and 
Nelson, aware of all the advantages which it gave them, made 
signal to prepare to anchor. 

Villeneuve^ was a skilful seaman; worthy of serving a better 
master and a better cause. His plan of defence was as well con- 
ceived, and as original, as the plan of attack. He formed the 
fleet in a double line, every alternate ship being about a cable's 

^ The French admiral. 



274 ROBERT SOU THEY 

length to windward of her second ahead and astern. Nelson, 
certain of a triumphant issue to the day, asked Blackwood what 
he should consider as a victory. That officer answered, that 
considering the handsome way in which battle was offered 
by the enemy, their apparent determination for a fair trial of 
strength, and the situation of the land, he thought it would be 
a glorious result if fourteen were captured. He replied: 'I shall 
not be satisfied with less than twenty.' Soon afterwards he 
asked him if he did not think there was a signal wanting. Cap- 
tain Blackwood made answer that he thought the whole fleet 
seemed very clearly to understand what they were about. These 
words were scarcely spoken before that signal was made, which 
will be remembered as long as the language, or even the memory, 
of England shall endure — Nelson's last signal : — ' England 
expects every man to do his duty!' It was received throughout 
the fleet with a shout of answering acclamation, made sublime 
by the spirit which it breathed and the feeling which it expressed. 
'Now,' said Lord Nelson, 'I can do no more. We must trust 
to the Great Disposer of all events, and the justice of our cause. 
I thank God for this great opportunity of doing my duty.' 

He wore that day, as usual, his admiral's frock coat, bearing on 
the left breast four stars of the different orders with which he 
was invested. Ornaments which rendered him so conspicuous 
a mark for the enemy, were beheld with ominous apprehensions 
by his officers. It was known that there were riflemen on board 
the French ships, and it could not be doubted but that his life 
would be particularly aimed at. They communicated their 
fears to each other; and the surgeon, Mr. Beatty, spoke to the 
chaplain. Dr. Scott, and to Mr. Scott, the public secretary, desir- 
ing that some person would entreat him to change his dress, or 
cover the stars: but they knew that such a request would highly 
displease him. 'In honour I gained them,' he had said when 
such a thing had been hinted to him formerly, 'and in honour 
I will die with them.' Mr. Beatty, however, would not have 
been deterred by any fear of exciting his displeasure, from speak- 
ing to him himself upon a subject in which the weal of England 
as well as the life of Nelson was concerned, but he was or- 
dered from the deck before he could find an opportunity. This 



THE DEATH OF NELSON 



275 



was a point upon which Nelson's officers knew that it was hopeless 
to remonstrate or reason with him; but both Blackwood, and 
his own captain, Hardy, represented to him how advantageous 
to the fleet it would be for him to keep out of action as long as 
possible; and he consented at last to let the Leviathan and the 
Temeraire, which were sailing abreast of the Victory, be ordered 
to pass ahead. Yet even here the last infirmity of this noble 
mind was indulged ; for these ships could not pass ahead if the 
Victory continued to carry all her sail; and so far was Nelson 
from shortening sail, that it was evident he took pleasure in press- 
ing on, and rendering it impossible for them to obey his own 
orders. A long swell was setting into the Bay of Cadiz: our 
ships, crowding all sail, moved majestically before it, with hght 
winds from the south-west. The sun shone on the sails of the 
enemy; and their well-formed line, with their numerous three- 
deckers, made an appearance which any other assailants would 
have thought formidable; but the British sailors only admired 
the beauty and the splendour of the spectacle; and, in full con- 
fidence of winning what they saw, remarked to each other, what 
a fine sight yonder ships would make at Spithead ! 

The French admiral, from the Bucentaure, beheld the new 
manner in which his enemy was advancing, Nelson and Colling- 
wood each leading his line; and, pointing them out to his offi- 
cers, he is said to have exclaimed, that such conduct could not 
fail to be successful. Yet Villeneuve had made his own dispo- 
sitions with the utmost skill, and the fleets under his command 
waited for the attack with perfect coolness. Ten minutes before 
twelve they opened their fire. Eight or nine of the ships imme- 
diately ahead of the Victory, and across her bows, fired single 
guns at her, to ascertain whether she was yet within their range. 
As soon as Nelson perceived that their shot passed over him, 
he desired Blackwood, and Captain Prowse, of the Sirius, to re- 
pair to their respective frigates; and, on their way, to tell all 
the captains of the line of battle ships that he depended on their 
exertions; and that, if by the prescribed mode of attack they 
found it impracticable to get into action, immediately, they might 
adopt whatever they thought best, provided it led them quickly 
and closely alongside an enemy. As they were standing on the 



276 ROBERT SOUTH EY 

front of the poop, Blackwood took him by the hand, saying, 
he hoped soon to return and find him in possession of twenty 
prizes. He replied: 'God bless you, Blackwood! I shall never 
see you again.' 

Nelson's column was steered about two points more to the 
north than Collingwood's, in order to cut off the enemy's escape 
into Cadiz: the lee-line, therefore, was first engaged. 'See,' 
cried Nelson, pointing to the Royal Sovereign, as she steered 
right for the centre of the enemy's line, cut through it astern of 
the Santa Anna, three-decker, and engaged her at the muzzle of 
her guns on the starboard side: 'see how that noble fellow, 
Collingwood, carries his ship into action ! ' Collingwood, de- 
lighted at being first in the heat of the fire, and knowing the 
feelings of his commander and old friend, turned to his captain, 
and exclaimed, 'Rotherham, what would Nelson give to be here !' 
Both these brave officers, perhaps, at this moment thought of 
Nelson with gratitude, for a circumstance which had occurred 
on the preceding day. Admiral Collingwood, with some of the 
captains, having gone on board the Victory to receive instructions. 
Nelson inquired of him where his captain was? and was told, 
in reply, that they were not upon good terms with each other. 
' Terms ! ' said Nelson ; — ' good terms with each other ! ' Imme- 
diately he sent a boat for Captain Rotherham; led him, as soon 
as he arrived, to Collingwood, and saying, 'Look, yonder are 
the enemy!' bade them 'shake hands like Englishmen.' 

The enemy continued to fire a gun at a time at the Victory, 
till they saw that a shot had passed through her main-topgallant- 
sail; then they opened their broadsides, aiming chiefly at her 
rigging, in the hope of disabling her before she could close with 
them. Nelson, as usual, had hoisted several flags, lest one should 
be shot away. The enemy showed no colours till late in the 
action, when they began to feel the necessity of having them to 
strike. For this reason, the Santissima Trinidad, Nelson's old 
acquaintance, as he used to call her, was distinguishable only by 
her four decks; and to the bow of this opponent he ordered the 
Victory to be steered. Meantime an incessant raking fire was 
kept up upon the Victory. The admiral's secretary was one of 
the first who fell : he was killed by a cannon-shot, while convers- 



THE DEATH OF NELSON 277 

ing with Hardy. Captain Adair, of the marines, with the help 
of a sailor, endeavoured to remove the body from Nelson's sight, 
who had a great regard for Mr. Scott; but he anxiously asked, 
' Is that poor Scott that's gone ? ' and being informed that it was 
indeed so, exclaimed, 'Poor fellow!' Presently a double-headed 
shot struck a party of marines, who were drawn up on the poop, 
and killed eight of them : upon which Nelson immediately desired 
Captain Adair to disperse his men round the ship, that they 
might not suffer so much from being together. A few minutes 
afterwards a shot struck the fore brace bits on the quarter-deck, 
and passed between Nelson and Hardy, a splinter from the bit 
tearing off Hardy's buckle and bruising his foot. Both stopped, 
and looked anxiously at each other, each supposing the other to 
be wounded. Nelson then smiled, and said, 'This is too warm 
work. Hardy, to last long.' 

The Victory had not yet returned a single gun: fifty of her 
men had been by this time killed or wounded, and her main- 
topmast, with all her studding sails and their booms, shot away. 
Nelson declared that, in all his battles, he had seen nothing 
which surpassed the cool courage of his crew on this occasion. 
At four minutes after twelve she opened her fire from both sides 
of her deck. It was not possible to break the enemy's line without 
running on board one of their ships : Hardy informed him of this, 
and asked which he would prefer. Nelson replied: 'Take your 
choice. Hardy, it does not signify much.' The master was then 
ordered to put the helm to port, and the Victory ran on board 
the Redoubtable, just as her tiller ropes were shot away. The 
French ship received her with a broadside; then instantly let 
down her lower-deck ports, for fear of being boarded through 
them, and never afterwards fired a great gun during the action. 
Her tops, like those of all the enemy's ships, were filled with 
riflemen. Nelson never placed musketry in his tops; he had 
a strong dislike to the practice, not merely because it endangers 
setting fire to the sails, but also because it is a murderous sort of 
warfare, by which individuals may suffer, and a commander, now 
and then, be picked off, but which never can decide the fate 
of a general engagement. 

Captain Harvey, in the Temeraire, fell, on board the Redoubtable 



278 ROBERT SOUTHEY 

on the other side. Another enemy was in like manner on board the 
Temeraire : so that these four ships formed as compact a tier as if 
they had been moored together, their heads lying all the same way. 
The lieutenants of the Victory, seeing this, depressed their guns 
of the middle and lower decks, and fired with a diminished charge, 
lest the shot should pass through, and injure the Temeraire. And 
because there was danger that the Redoubtable might take fire from 
the lower-deck guns, the muzzles of which touched her side when 
they were run out, the fireman of each gun stood ready with a 
bucket of water, which, as soon as the gun was discharged, he 
dashed into the hole made by the shot. An incessant fire was kept 
up from the Victory from both sides; her larboard guns playing 
upon the Bucentaure and the huge Santissima Trinidad. 

It had been part of Nelson's prayer that the British fleet might 
be distinguished by humanity in the victory which he expected. 
Setting an example himself, he twice gave orders to cease firing 
upon the Redoubtable, supposing that she had struck, because 
her great guns were silent ; for, as she carried no flag, there was no 
means of instantly ascertaining the fact. From this ship, which he 
had thus twice spared, he received his death. A ball fired from 
her mizzen-top, which, in the then situation of the two vessels, 
was not more than fifteen yards from that part of the deck where 
he was standing, struck the epaulette on his left shoulder, — about 
a quarter after one, just in the heat of the action. He fell upon his 
face, on the spot which was covered with his poor secretary's blood. 
Hardy, who was a few steps from him, turning round, saw three 
men raising him up. 'They have done for me at last. Hardy,' said 
he. 'I hope not!' cried Hardy. 'Yes,' he replied; 'my back 
bone is shot through.' Yet even now, not for a moment losing his 
presence of mind, he observed, as they were carrying him down 
the ladder, that the tiller ropes, which had been shot away, were 
not yet replaced, and ordered that new ones should be rove imme- 
diately: — then, that he might not be seen by the crew, he 
took out his handkerchief, and covered his face and his stars. — 
Had he but concealed these badges of honour from the enemy, 
England, perhaps, would not have had cause to receive with 
sorrow the news of the battle of Trafalgar. 

The cockpit was crowded with wounded and dying men, over 



THE DEATH OF NELSON 279 

whose bodies he was with some difficulty conveyed, and laid upon 
a pallet in the midshipmen's berth. It was soon perceived, upon 
examination, that the wound was mortal. This, however, was 
concealed from all, except Captain Hardy, the chaplain, and 
the medical attendants. He himself being certain, from the sensa- 
tion in his back, and the gush of blood which he felt momently 
within his breast, that no human care could avail him, insisted that 
the surgeon should leave him, and attend to those to whom he 
might be useful : 'For,' said he, 'you can do nothing for me.' All 
that could be done was to fan him with paper, and frequently 
to give him lemonade, to alleviate his intense thirst. He was in 
great pain, and expressed much anxiety for the event of the action, 
which now began to declare itself. As often as a ship struck the 
crew of the Victory hurraed ; and at every hurra a visible expression 
of joy gleamed in the eyes, and marked the countenance, of the 
dying hero. But he became impatient to see Captain Hardy; 
and as that officer, though often sent for, could not leave the deck. 
Nelson feared that some fatal cause prevented him, and repeatedly 
cried : ' Will no one bring Hardy to me ? He must be killed ! 
He is surely dead 1 ' — An hour and ten minutes elapsed, from the 
time when Nelson received his wound, before Hardy could come 
to him. They shook hands in silence ; Hardy in vain struggling to 
suppress the feelings of that most painful, and yet sublimest mo- 
ment. 'Well, Hardy,' said Nelson, 'how goes the day with us?' 
— 'Very well,' replied Hardy; 'ten ships have struck, but five 
of their van have tacked, and show an intention of bearing down 
upon the Victory. I have called two or three of our fresh ships 
round, and have no doubt of giving them a drubbing.' — 'I hope,' 
said Nelson, 'none of our ships have struck?' Hardy answered, 
'There was no fear of that.' Then, and not till then, Nelson 
spoke of himself. 'I am a dead man, Hardy,' said he; 'I am 
going fast : — it will be all over with me soon. Come nearer to me. 
Let my dear Lady Hamilton have my hair, and all other things 
belonging to me.' Hardy observed, that he hoped Mr. Beatty 
could yet hold out some prospect of life. ' Oh no ! ' he replied ; ' it 
is impossible. My back is shot through. Beatty will tell you so.' 
Captain Hardy then, once more, shook hands with him; and, with 
a heart almost bursting, hastened upon deck. 



28o ROBERT SOUTHEY 

By this time all feeling below the breast was gone, and Nelson, 
having made the surgeon ascertain this, said to him: 'You know 
I am gone. I know it. I feel something rising in my breast' — 
putting his hand on his left side — 'which tells me so.' And upon 
Beatty's inquiring whether his pain was very great? he replied, 
'So great, that he wished he was dead. Yet,' said he, in a lower 
voice, ' one would like to live a little longer too ! ' And after a few 
minutes, in the same under-tone, he added: 'What would become 
of poor Lady Hamilton if she knew my situation ! ' Next to his 
country she occupied his thoughts. Captain Hardy, some fifty 
minutes after he had left the cockpit, returned ; and, again taking 
the hand of his dying friend and commander, congratulated him 
on having gained a complete victory. How many of the enemy 
were taken he did not know, as it was impossible to perceive them 
distinctly — but fourteen or fifteen at least. 'That's well,' cried 
Nelson; 'but I bargained for twenty.' And then, in a stronger 
voice, he said, 'Anchor, Hardy; anchor.' Hardy, upon this, 
hinted that Admiral Collingwood would take upon himself the 
direction of affairs. 'Not while I live. Hardy!' said the dying 
Nelson, ineffectually endeavouring to raise himself from the bed: 
'do you anchor.' His previous order for preparing to anchor 
had shown how clearly he foresaw the necessity of this. Presently, 
calling Hardy back, he said to him, in a low voice, 'Don't throw me 
overboard' ; and he desired that he might be buried by his parents, 
unless it should please the king to order otherwise. Then, re- 
verting to private feelings : ' Take care of my dear Lady Hamilton, 
Hardy; take care of poor Lady Hamilton. — Kiss me, Hardy,' 
said he. Hardy knelt down, and kissed his cheek : and Nelson 
said, ' Now I am satisfied. Thank God, I have done my duty.' 
Hardy stood over him in silence for a moment or two, then 
knelt again, and kissed his forehead. 'Who is that?' said 
Nelson; and being informed, he replied, 'God bless you, Hardy.' 
And Hardy then left him — for ever. 

Nelson now desired to be turned upon his right side, and said: 
'I Vs^ish I had not left the deck ; for I shall soon be gone.' Death 
was, indeed, rapidly approaching. He said to the chaplain: 
'Doctor, I have not been a great sinner'; and, after a short pause, 
'Remember that I leave Lady Hamilton, and my daughter Horatia, 



THE DEATH OF NELSON 281 

as a legacy to my country.' His articulation now became difficult ; 
but he was distinctly heard to say, 'Thank God, I have done my 
duty ! ' These words he had repeatedly pronounced ; and they 
were the last words he uttered. He expired at thirty minutes after 
four, — three hours and a quarter after he had received his wound. 



JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART 

THE DEATH OF SCOTT 

[From Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., Vol. VII, Chap. xi. 
1837-1838. Robert Cadell, Edinburgh. 

"Of the literary merits of the ' Life of Scott ' it is not possible for one whose 
breviary, as it were, the book has been from boyhood, to speak with impar- 
tiality. To a Scot, and a Scot of the Border, the book has the charm of 
home, and is dear to us as his own grey hills were dear to Sir Walter. Nec- 
essarily, inevitably, the stranger cannot, or seldom can, share this sentiment. 
Mr. Saintsbury, now in some degree a Scot by adoption, has, indeed, placed 
the book beside or above Boswell's. That is a length to which I cannot go; 
for Boswell's hero appears to myself to be of a character more universally 
human, a wiser man, a greater humourist, his biography a more valuable 
possession, than Sir Walter and Sir Walter's ' Life.' But it were childish 
to dispute about the relative merits of two chefs-d'ceuvre. Each work is 
perfect in its kind, and in relation to its subject. The self-repression of 
Lockhart, accompanied by his total lack of self-consciousness (so astonishing 
in so shy a man), when his own person has to figure on the scene, is as valu- 
able as the very opposite quality in Boswell. 

" Later writers, Thackeray, Macaulay, Mr. Ruskin, Mr. Carlyle, Mr. 
Louis Stevenson, Mr. Pater, have given examples of styles more personal, 
infinitely more conspicuous, than Lockhart's; to many, doubtless to most 
readers, more taking. Lockhart has no mannerisms, no affectations, no 
privy jargon, no confidences with the reader; but it may almost be said 
that he has no faults. His English is like the English of Swift, all the light 
is concentrated on the object. Without disparagement of the great or pleas- 
ing authors already named; with every acknowledgment of the charming 
or the astonishing qualities of their various manners, we must also claim a 
place, and a high place, for the style of Lockhart. He wrote English." — 
Andrew Lang, The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart, Vol. II, pp. 
122-124. John C. Nimmo, London,, 1897.] 

He reached London about six o'clock on the evening of Wednes- 
day the 13th of June. Owing to the unexpected rapidity of the 
journey, his eldest daughter had had no notice when to expect 
him ; and fearful of finding her either out of town, or unprepared 



282 JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART 

to receive him and his attendants under her roof, Charles Scott 
drove to the St. James's Hotel in Jermyn Street, and established 
his quarters there before he set out in quest of his sister and myself. 
When we reached the hotel, he recognised us with many marks of 
tenderness, but signified that he was totally exhausted; so no at- 
tempt was made to remove him further, and he was put to bed 
immediately. Dr. Fergusson saw him the same night, and next 
day Sir Henry Halford and Dr. Holland saw him also ; and during 
the next three weeks the two latter visited him daily, while Fergus- 
son was scarcely absent from his pillow. The Major was soon on 
the spot. To his children, all assembled once more about him, 
he repeatedly gave his blessing in a very solemn manner, as if 
expecting immediate death; but he was never in a condition for 
conversation, and sunk either into sleep or delirious stupor upon 
the slightest effort. 

Mrs. Thomas Scott came to town as soon as she heard of his 
arrival, and remained to help us. She was more than once 
recognised and thanked. Mr. Cadell, too, arrived from Edinburgh, 
to render any assistance in his power. I think Sir Walter saw 
no other of his friends except Mr. John Richardson, and him only 
once. As usual, he woke up at the sound of a familiar voice, 
and made an attempt to put forth his hand, but it dropped power- 
less, and he said, with a smile — "Excuse my hand." Richard- 
son made a struggle to suppress his emotion, and, after a moment, 
got out something about Abbotsford and the woods, which he had 
happened to see shortly before. The eye brightened, and he said 
— "How does Kirklands get on?" Mr. Richardson had lately 
purchased the estate so called in Teviotdale, and Sir Walter 
had left him busied with plans of building. His friend told him 
that his new house was begun, and that the Marquis of Lothian had 
very kindly lent him one of his own, meantime, in its vicinity. 
"Ay, Lord Lothian is a good man," said Sir Walter; "he is a man 
from whom one may receive a favour, and that's saying a good deal 
for any man in these days." The stupor then sank back upon him, 
and Richardson never heard his voice again. This state of things 
continued till the beginning of July. 

During these melancholy weeks, great interest and sympathy 
were manifested. Allan Cunningham mentions that, walking 



THE DEATH OF SCOTT 283 

home late one night, he found several workingmen standing to- 
gether at the corner of Jermyn Street, and one of them asked him — 
as if there was but one deathbed in London — "Do you know, sir, 
if this is the street where he is lying?" The inquiries both at the 
hotel and at my house were incessant ; and I think there was hardly 
a member of the royal family who did not send every day. The 
newspapers teemed with paragraphs about Sir Walter ; and one of 
these, it appears, threw out a suggestion that his travels had 
exhausted his pecuniary resources, and that if he were capable of 
reflection at all, cares of that sort might probably harass his pillow. 
This paragraph came from a very ill-informed, but, I dare say, 
a well-meaning quarter. It caught the attention of some members 
of the Government ; and, in consequence, I received a private com- 
munication, to the eflfect that, if the case were as stated. Sir Walter's 
family had only to say what sum would relieve him from embarrass- 
ment, and it would be immediately advanced by the Treasury. 
The then Paymaster of the Forces, Lord John Russell, had the 
delicacy to convey this message through a lady with whose friend- 
ship he knew us to be honoured — the Honourable Catherine 
Arden. We expressed our grateful sense of his politeness, and of 
the liberality of the Government, and I now beg leave to do so once 
more ; — but his lordship was of course informed that Sir Walter 
Scott was not situated as the journalist had represented. 

Dr. Fergusson's Memorandum on Jermyn Street will be accept- 
able to the reader. He says — ''When I saw Sir Walter, he was 
lying in the second floor back-room of the St. James's Hotel, in 
a state of stupor, from which, however, he could be roused for a 
moment by being addressed, and then he recognised those about 
him, but immediately relapsed. I think I never saw anything more 
magnificent than the symmetry of his colossal bust, as he lay on 
the pillow with his chest and neck exposed. During the time he 
was in Jermyn Street he was calm but never collected, and in 
general either in absolute stupor or in a waking dream. He never 
seemed to know where he was, but imagined himself to be still in 
the steam-boat. The rattling of carriages, and the noises of the 
street, sometimes disturbed this illusion — and then he fancied him- 
self at the polling-booth of Jedburgh, where he had been insulted 
and stoned. During the whole of this period of apparent helpless- 



284 JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART 

ness, the great features of his character could not be mistaken. 
He always exhibited great self-possession, and acted his part with 
wonderful power whenever visited, though he relapsed the next 
moment into the stupor from which strange voices had roused him. 
A gentleman [Mr. Richardson] stumbled over a chair in his dark 
room; — he immediately started up, and though unconscious that 
it was a friend, expressed as much concern and feeling as if he 
had never been labouring under the irritability of disease. It 
was impossible even for those who most constantly saw and waited 
on him in his then deplorable condition to relax from the habitual 
deference which he had always inspired. He expressed his will 
as determinedly as ever, and enforced it with the same apt and 
good-natured irony as he was wont to use. 

''At length his constant yearning to return to Abbotsford in- 
duced his physicians to consent to his removal ; and the moment 
this was notified to him, it seemed to infuse new vigour into his 
frame. It was on a calm, clear afternoon of the 7th July, that 
every preparation was made for his embarkation on board the 
steam-boat. He was placed on a chair by his faithful servant 
Nicolson, half -dressed, and loosely wrapped in a quilted dressing- 
gown. He requested Lockhart and myself to wheel him towards 
the light of the open window, and we both remarked the vigorous 
lustre of his eye. He sat there silently gazing on space for more 
than half an hour, apparently wholly occupied with his own 
thoughts, and having no distinct perception of where he was, or 
how he came there. He suffered himself to be lifted into his 
carriage, which was surrounded by a crowd, among whom were 
many gentlemen on horseback, who had loitered about to gaze 
on the scene. His children were deeply affected, and Mrs. Lock- 
hart trembled from head to foot, and wept bitterly. Thus sur- 
rounded by those nearest to him, he alone was unconscious of the 
cause or the depth of their grief, and while yet alive seemed to be 
carried to his grave." 

On this his last journey, Sir Walter was attended by his two 
daughters, Mr. Cadell, and myself — and also by Dr. Thomas 
Watson, who (it being impossible for Dr. Fergusson to leave town 
at that moment) kindly undertook to see him safe at Abbotsford. 
We embarked in the James Watt steam-boat, the master of which 



THE DEATH OF SCOTT 285 

(Captain John Jamieson), as well as the agents of the proprietors, 
made every arrangement in their power for the convenience of the 
invalid. The Captain gave up for Sir Walter's use his own private 
cabin, which was a separate erection — a sort of cottage on the 
deck; and he seemed unconscious, after being laid in bed there, 
that any new removal had occurred. On arriving at Newhaven, 
late on the 9th, we found careful preparations made for his landing 
by the manager of the Shipping Company (Mr. Hamilton) — and 
Sir Walter, prostrate in his carriage, was slung on shore, and 
conveyed from thence to Douglas's hotel, in St. Andrew's Square, 
in the same complete apparent unconsciousness. Mrs. Douglas 
had in former days been the Duke of Buccleuch's housekeeper at 
Bowhill, and she and her husband had also made the most suitable 
provision. 

At a very early hour on the morning of Wednesday the nth, 
we again placed him in his carriage, and he lay in the same torpid 
state during the first two stages on the road to Tweedside. But as 
we descended the vale of the Gala he began to gaze about him, and 
by degrees it was obvious that he was recognising the features of 
that familiar landscape. Presently he murmured a name or two 
— "Gala Water, surely — Buckholm — Torwoodlee." As we 
rounded the hill at Ladhope, and the outline of the Eildons burst 
on him, he became greatly excited ; and when, turning himself on 
the couch, his eye caught at length his own towers at the distance 
of a mile, he sprang up with a cry of delight. The river being in 
flood, we had to go round a few miles by Melrose bridge; and 
during the time this occupied, his woods and house being within 
prospect, it required occasionally both Dr. Watson's strength and 
mine, in addition to Nicolson's, to keep him in the carriage. After 
passing the bridge, the road for a couple of miles loses sight of 
Abbotsford, and he relapsed into his stupor; but on gaining the 
bank immediately above it, his excitement became again un- 
governable. 

Mr. Laidlaw was waiting at the porch, and assisted us in lifting 
him into the dining-room, where his bed had been prepared. He 
sat bewildered for a few moments, and then resting his eye on 
Laidlaw, said • — ''Ha ! Willie Laidlaw ! O man, how often have 
I thought of you!" By this time his dogs had assembled about 



286 JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART 

his chair — they began to fawn upon him and lick his hands, and 
he alternately sobbed and smiled over them, until sleep oppressed 
him. 

Dr. Watson having consulted on all things with Mr. Clarkson 
of Melrose and his father, the good old "Country Surgeon" of 
Selkirk, resigned the patient to them, and returned to London. 
None of them could have any hope but that of soothing irritation. 
Recovery was no longer to be thought of: but there might be 
Euthanasia. 

And yet something like a ray of hope did break in upon us next 
morning. Sir Walter awoke perfectly conscious where he was, and 
expressed an ardent wish to be carried out into his garden. We 
procured a Bath chair from Huntley Burn, and Laidlaw and I 
wheeled him out before his door, and up and down for some time 
on the turf, and among the rose-beds then in full bloom. The 
grand-children admired the new vehicle, and would be helping in 
their way to push it about. He sat in silence, smiling placidly 
on them and the dogs their companions, and now and then ad- 
miring the house, the screen of the garden, and the flowers and 
trees. By and by he conversed a little, very composedly, with us — 
said he was happy to be at home — that he felt better than he had 
ever done since he left it, and would perhaps disappoint the 
doctors after all. He then desired to be wheeled through his 
rooms, and we moved him leisurely for an hour or more up and 
down the hall and the great Hbrary: — "I have seen much," he 
kept saying, ''but nothing Hke my ain house — give me one turn 
more !" He was gentle as an infant, and allowed himself to be 
put to bed again the moment we told him that we thought he 
had had enough for one day. 

Next morning he was still better. After again enjoying the 
Bath chair for perhaps a couple of hours out of doors, he desired 
to be drawn into the library, and placed by the central window, 
that he might look down upon the Tweed. Here he expressed 
a wish that I should read to him, and when I asked from what book, 
he said — "Need you ask ? There is but one." I chose the 14th 
chapter of St. John's Gospel ; he listened with mild devotion, and 
said when I had done — "Well, this is a great comfort — I have 
followed you distinctlyj and I feel as if I were yet to be myself 



THE DEATH OF SCOTT 287 

again." In this placid frame he was again put to bed, and had 
many hours of soft slumber. 

On the third day Mr. Laidlaw and I again wheeled him about 
the small piece of lawn and shrubbery in front of the house for 
some time ; and the weather being delightful, and all the richness of 
summer around him, he seemed to taste fully the balmy influences 
of nature. The sun getting very strong, we halted the chair in 
a shady corner, just within the verge of his verdant arcade around 
the court-wall; and breathing the coolness of the spot, he said, 
"Read me some amusing thing — read me a bit of Crabbe." I 
brought out the first volume of his old favourite that I could lay 
hand on, and turned to what I remembered as one of his most 
favourite passages in it — the description of the arrival of 
the Players in the Borough. He listened with great interest, 
and also, as I soon perceived, with great curiosity. Every 
now and then he exclaimed, ''Capital — excellent — very 
good — Crabbe has lost nothing" — and we were too well 
satisfied that he considered himself as hearing a new pro- 
duction, when, chuckling over one couplet, he said, "Better 
and better — but how will poor Terry ^ endure these cuts?" I 
went on with the poet's terrible sarcasms upon the theatrical life, 
and he listened eagerly, muttering, "Honest Dan!" — "Dan 
won't like this." At length I reached those lines — 

"Sad happy race! soon raised, and soon depressed, 
Your days all passed in jeopardy and jest; 
Poor without prudence, with aflflictions vain, 
Not warned by misery, nor enriched by gain." 

"Shut the book," said Sir Walter — "I can't stand more of this — 
it will touch Terry to the very quick." 

On the morning of Sunday the 15th, he was again taken out into 
the little pleasaunce, and got as far as his favourite terrace-walk 
between the garden and the river, from which he seemed to survey 
the valley and the hills with much satisfaction. On re-entering 
the house, he desired me to read to him from the New Testament, 
and after that he again called for a little of Crabbe ; but whatever 
I selected from that poet seemed to be listened to as if it made part 

^ Daniel Terry, an actor, and friend of Scott. 



288 JOHN GIBSON LOG KH ART 

of some new volume published while he was in Italy. He at- 
tended with this sense of novelty even to the tale of Phoebe Dawson, 
which not many months before he could have repeated every line 
of, and which I chose for one of these readings, because, as is 
known to every one, it had formed the last solace of Mr. Fox's 
deathbed. On the contrary, his recollection of whatever I read 
from the Bible appeared to be lively; and in the afternoon, when 
we made his grandson, a child of six years, repeat some of Dr. Watts' 
hymns by his chair, he seemed also to remember them perfectly. 
That evening he heard the Church service, and when I was about 
to close the book, said — "Why do you omit the visitation for the 
sick ? " — which I added accordingly. 

On Monday he remained in bed, and seemed extremely feeble ; 
but after breakfast on Tuesday the 17th he appeared revived some- 
what, and was again wheeled about on the turf. Presently he fell 
asleep in his chair, and after dozing for perhaps half an hour, 
started awake, and shaking the plaids we had put about him from off 
his shoulders, said — "This is sad idleness. I shall forget what I 
have been thinking of, if I don't set it down now. Take me into 
my own room, and fetch the keys of my desk." He repeated this 
so earnestly, that we could not refuse ; his daughters went into his 
study, opened his writing-desk, and laid paper and pens in the 
usual order, and I then moved him through the hall and into the 
spot where he had always been accustomed to work. When the 
chair was placed at the desk, and he found himself in the old posi- 
tion, he smiled and thanked us, and said — "Now give me my pen, 
and leave me for a little to myself." Sophia put the pen into his 
hand, and he endeavoured to close his fingers upon it, but they 
refused their office — it dropped on the paper. He sank back 
among his pillows, silent tears rolling down his cheeks ; but com- 
posing himself by and by, motioned to me to wheel him out of doors 
again. Laidlaw met us at the porch, and took his turn of the 
chair. Sir Walter, after a httle while, again dropped into slumber. 
When he was awaking, Laidlaw said to me — "Sir Walter has had 
a little repose." — "No Willie," said he — "no repose for Sir 
Walter but in the grave." The tears again rushed from his eyes. 
"Friends," said he, "don't let me expose myself — get me to bed — 
that's the only place." 



THE DEATH OF SCOTT 289 

With this scene ended our glimpse of dayhght. Sir Walter never, 
I think, left his room afterwards, and hardly his bed, except for an 
hour or two in the middle of the day; and after another week 
he was unable even for this. During a few days he was in a state 
of painful irritation — and I saw reahsed all that he had himself 
prefigured in his description of the meeting between Chrystal 
Croftangry and his paralytic friend. Dr. Ross came out from 
Edinburgh, bringing with him his wife, one of the dearest nieces of 
the Clerks' table. Sir Walter with some difficulty recognised the 
Doctor; but on hearing Mrs. Ross's voice, exclaimed at once — 
''Isn't that Kate Hume ? " These kind friends remained for two 
or three days with us. Clarkson's lancet was pronounced neces- 
sary, and the relief it afforded was, I am happy to say, very 
effectual. 

After this he declined daily, but still there was great strength to 
be wasted, and the process was long. He seemed, however, to 
suffer no bodily pain ; and his mind, though hopelessly obscured, 
appeared, when there was any symptom of consciousness, to be 
dwelling, with rare exceptions, on serious and solemn things; the 
accent of the voice grave, sometimes awful, but never querulous, 
and very seldom indicative of any angry or resentful thoughts. 
Now and then he imagined himself to be administering justice 
as Sheriff; and once or twice he seemed to be ordering Tom 
Purdie about trees. A few times also, I am sorry to say, we could 
perceive that his fancy was at Jedburgh — and Burk Sir Walter 
escaped him in a melancholy tone. But commonly whatever we 
could follow him in was a fragment of the Bible (especially the 
Prophecies of Isaiah and the Book of Job), of some petition 
in the litany, or a verse of some psalm (in the old Scotch metrical 
version), or of some of the magnificent hymns of the Romish ritual, 
in which he had always dehghted, but which probably hung on his 
memory now in connection with the Church services he had at- 
tended while in Italy. We very often heard distinctly the cadence 
of the Dies IrcB; and I think the very last stanza that we could make 
out was the first of a still greater favourite : — 

"Stabat Mater dolorosa, 
Juxta crucem lachrymosa, 
Dum pendebat Filius." 

u 



290 JOHN GIBSON LOG KH ART 

All this time he continued to recognise his daughters, Laidlaw, 
and myself, whenever we spoke to him — and received every at- 
tention with a most touching thankfulness. Mr. Clarkson, too, 
was always saluted with the old courtesy, though the cloud opened 
but a moment for him to do so. Most truly might it be said that 
the gentleman survived the genius. 

After two or three weeks had passed in this way, I was obliged 
to leave Sir Walter for a single day, and go into Edinburgh to 
transact business, on his account, with Mr. Henry Cockburn 
(now Lord Cockburn), then Solicitor- General for Scotland. The 
Scotch Reform Bill threw a great burden of new duties and re- 
sponsibilities upon the Sheriffs; and Scott's Sheriff-substitute, the 
Laird of Raeburn, not having been regularly educated for the 
law, found himself unable to encounter these novelties, especially 
as regarded the registration of voters, and other details connected 
with the recent enlargement of the electoral franchise. Under 
such circumstances, as no one but the Sheriff could appoint an- 
other substitute, it became necessary for Sir Walter's family to 
communicate the state he was in in a formal manner to the Law 
Ofl&cers of the Crown; and the Lord Advocate (Mr. Jeffrey), in 
consequence, introduced and carried through Parliament a short 
bill (2 and 3 William IV. cap. loi), authorising the Government 
to appoint a new Sheriff of Selkirkshire, ''during the incapacity 
or non-resignation of Sir Walter Scott." It was on this bill that 
the Solicitor- General had expressed a wish to converse with me : 
but there was little to be said, as the temporary nature of the new 
appointment gave no occasion for any pecuniary question; and^ 
if that had been otherwise, the circumstances of the case would 
have rendered Sir Walter's family entirely indifferent upon such a 
subject. There can be no doubt, that if he had recovered in so far 
as to be capable of executing a resignation, the Government would 
have considered it just to reward thirty- two years' faithful services 
by a retired allowance equivalent to his salary — and as little, 
that the Government would have had sincere satisfaction in 
settling that matter in the shape most acceptable to himself. And 
perhaps (though I feel that it is scarcely worth while) I may as 
well here express my regret that a statement highly unjust and in- 
jurious should have found its way into the pages of some of Sir 



THE DEATH OF SCOTT 291 

Walter's biographers. These writers have thought fit to insinuate 
that there was a want of courtesy and respect on the part of the 
Lord Advocate, and the other official persons connected with this 
arrangement. On the contrary, nothing could be more hand- 
some and delicate than the whole of their conduct in it; Mr. 
Cockburn could not have entered into the case with greater feeling 
and tenderness, had it concerned a brother of his own ; and when 
Mr. Jeffrey introduced his bill in the House of Commons, he used 
language so graceful and touching, that both Sir Robert Peel and 
Mr. Croker went across the House to thank him cordially for it. 

Perceiving, towards the close of August, that the end was near, 
and thinking it very likely that Abbotsford might soon undergo 
many changes, and myself, at all events, never see it again, I felt 
a desire to have some image preserved of the interior apartments 
as occupied by their founder, and invited from Edinburgh for that 
purpose Sir Walter's dear friend, Sir WilHam Allan — whose 
presence, I well knew, would even under the circumstances of that 
time be nowise troublesome to any of the family, but the contrary 
in all respects. Sir William willingly compHed, and executed a 
series of beautiful drawings. He also shared our watchings, and 
witnessed all but the last moments. Sir Walter's cousins, the 
ladies of Ashestiel, came down frequently, for a day or two at a 
time, and did whatever sisterly affection could prompt, both for 
the sufferer and his daughters. Miss Mary Scott (daughter of his 
uncle Thomas), and Mrs. Scott of Harden, did the like. 

As I was dressing on the morning of Monday the 17th of Sep- 
tember, Nicolson came into my room, and told me that his master 
had awoke in a state of composure and consciousness, and wished 
to see me immediately. I found him entirely himself, though 
in the last extreme of feebleness. His eye was clear and calm — 
every trace of the wild fire of delirium extinguished. "Lockhart," 
he said, ''I may have but a minute to speak to you. My dear, be 
a good man — be virtuous — be religious — be a good man. Noth- 
ing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here." — 
He paused, and I said — ''Shall I send for Sophia and Anne ?" — 
''No," said he, "don't disturb them. Poor souls! I know they 
were up all night — God bless you all." — With this he sunk into a 
very tranquil sleep, and, indeed, he scarcely afterwards gave any 



292 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAU LAY 

sign of consciousness, except for an instant on the arrival of his 
sons. 

They, on learning that the scene was about to close, obtained 
a new leave of absence from their posts, and both reached Abbots- 
ford on the 19th. About half -past one p.m. on the 21st of Septem- 
ber, Sir Walter breathed his last, in the presence of all his children. 
It was a beautiful day — so warm, that every window was wide 
open — and so perfectly still, that the sound of all others most 
delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles, 
was distinctly audible as we knelt around the bed, and his eldest 
son kissed and closed his eyes. 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 

FANNY BURNEY AT COURT 

[From "Madame D'Arblay," 1843, i^^ Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. 
Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1870. 

Arblay, Frances (Burney), Madame d' (1752-1840), novelist, daugh- 
ter of Dr. Burney; self-educated; published her first novel, 'Evelina,' 
anonymously (though her father soon divulged the secret), 1778; brought 
by its success to the notice of most of the literary personages of the day ; 
published 'Cecilia,' with similar success, 1782; made the acquaintance of 
Mrs. Delaney, who procured her the appointment of second keeper of the 
queen's robes, 1786; being broken in health, obtained with difl&culty per- 
mission to retire, 1790; married General d' Arblay, a French refugee in 
England, 1793; published 'Camilla,' 1796; joined her husband, who had 
endeavoured to obtain employment in Paris, 1802; returned to England, 
1812; published her last novel, 'The Wanderer,' 1814; rejoined her hus- 
band in Paris, and retired to Belgium; passed the rest of her life in Eng- 
land, after the Waterloo campaign; edited her father's 'Memoirs,' 1832; 
published 'Diary and Letters,' 1842-6. — Index and Epitome of D. N. B. 

"A style to dazzle, to gain admirers everywhere, to attract imitators in 
multitude! A style brilliant, metalKc, exterior; making strong points, al- 
ternating invective with eulogy, wrapping in a robe of rhetoric the thing it 
represents ; not, with the soft play of life, following and rendering the thing's 
very form and pressure. For, indeed, in rendering things in this fashion, 
Macaulay's gift did not He." — Matthew Arnold, "A French Critic on 
Milton," Mixed Essays, pp. 237-238. Macmillan & Co., New York, 1879. 

"Shall we go back to the art of which Macaulay was so great a master? 
We could do worse. It must be a great art that can make men lay aside the 
novel and take up the history, to find there, in very fact, the movement and 



FANNY BURNEY AT COURT 293 

drama of life. What Macaulay does well he does incomparably. Who else 
can mass the details as he does, and yet not mar or obscure, but only heighten, 
the effect of the picture as a whole ? Who else can bring so amazing a pro- 
fusion of knowledge within the strait limits of a simple plan, nowhere en- 
cumbered, everywhere free and obvious in its movement? How sure the 
strokes, and how bold and vivid the result! Yet when we have laid the 
book aside, when the charm and the excitement of the teUing narrative have 
worn off, when we have lost step with the swinging gait at which the style 
goes, when the details have faded from our recollection, and we sit removed 
and thoughtful, with only the greater outlines of the story sharp upon our 
minds, a deep misgiving and dissatisfaction take possession of us. We are no 
longer young, and we are chagrined that we should have been so pleased 
and taken with the glitter and color and mere life of the picture." — Wood- 
row Wilson, Mere Literature and Other Essays, pp. 167, 168, Houghton, 
Mifflin & Co., Boston, 1896.] 

In December 1785, Miss Burney was on a visit to Mrs. Delany 
at Windsor. The dinner was over. The old lady was taking a nap. 
Her grandniece, a little girl of seven, was playing at some Christmas 
game with the visitors, when the door opened, and a stout gentle- 
man entered unannounced, with a star on his breast, and "What? 
what? what? " in his mouth. A cry of "The King !" was set up. 
A general scampering followed. Miss Burney owns that she 
could not have been more terrified if she had seen a ghost. But 
Mrs. Delany came forward to pay her duty to her royal friend, and 
the disturbance was quieted. Frances was then presented, 
and underwent a long examination and cross examination about 
all that she had written and all that she meant to write. The 
Queen soon made her appearance and his Majesty repeated, for 
the benefit of his consort, the information which he had extracted 
from Miss Burney. The good-nature of the royal pair might have 
softened even the authors of the Probationary Odes, and could 
not but be dehghtful to a young lady who had been brought 
up a Tory. In a few days the visit was repeated. Miss Burney 
was more at ease than before. His Majesty, instead of seeking for 
information, condescended to impart it, and passed sentence 
on many great writers, English and foreign. Voltaire he pro- 
nounced a monster. Rousseau he liked rather better. "But 
was there ever," he cried, "such stuff as great part of Shakspeare? 
Only one must not say so. But what think you ? What? Is there 
not sad stuff ? What ? What ? " 

The next day Frances enjoyed the privilege of listening to some 



294 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 

equally valuable criticism uttered by the Queen touching Goethe 
and Klopstock, and might have learned an important lesson of 
economy from the mode in which her Majesty's library had been 
formed. " I picked the book up on a stall," said the Queen. '' Oh, 
it is amazing what good books there are on stalls ! " Mrs. Delany, 
who seems to have understood from these words that her Majesty 
was in the habit of exploring the booths of Moorfields and Holy- 
well Street in person, could not suppress an exclamation of surprise. 
"Why," said the Queen, "I don't pick them up myself. But I 
have a servant very clever; and, if they are not to be had at the 
booksellers, they are not for me more than for another." Miss 
Burney describes this conversation as delightful ; and, indeed, we 
cannot wonder that, with her literary tastes, she should be de- 
lighted at hearing in how magnificent a manner the greatest lady in 
the land encouraged literature. 

The truth is, that Frances was fascinated by the condescending 
kindness of the two great personages to whom she had been pre- 
sented. Her father was even more infatuated than herself. 
The result was a step of which we cannot think with patience, 
but which, recorded as it is, with all its consequences, in these 
volumes, deserves at least this praise, that it has furnished a most 
impressive warning. 

A German Lady of the name of Haggerdorn, one of the keepers 
of the Queen's robes, retired about this time; and her Majesty 
offered the vacant post to Miss Burney. When we consider that 
Miss Burney was decidedly the most popular writer of fictitious 
narrative then living, that competence, if not opulence, was within 
her reach, and that she was more than usually happy in her domes- 
tic circle, and when we compare the sacrifice which she was invited 
to make with the remuneration which was held out to her, we 
are divided between laughter and indignation. 

What was demanded of her was that she should consent to 
be almost as completely separated from her family and friends 
as if she had gone to Calcutta, and almost as close a prisoner as if 
she had been sent to gaol for a libel ; that with talents which had 
instructed and delighted the highest living minds, she should now 
be employed only in mixing snuff and sticking pins; that she 
should be summoned by a waiting- woman's bell to a waiting- 



FANNY BURNEY AT COURT 295 

woman's duties; that she should pass her whole life under the 
restraints of a paltry etiquette, should sometimes fast till she was 
ready to swoon with hunger, should sometimes stand till her 
knees gave way with fatigue; that she should not dare to speak 
or move without considering how her mistress might like her words 
and gestures. Instead of those distinguished men and women, the 
flower of all political parties, with whom she had been in the habit 
of mixing on terms of equal friendship, she was to have for her 
perpetual companion the chief keeper of the robes, an old hag from 
Germany, of mean understanding, of insolent manners, and of 
temper which, naturally savage, had now been exasperated by dis- 
ease. Now and then, indeed, poor Frances might console herself 
for the loss of Burke's and Windham's society, by joining in the 
''celestial colloquy sublime" of his Majesty's Equerries. 

And what was the consideration for which she was to sell her- 
self to this slavery? A peerage in her own right? A pension of 
two thousand a year for life ? A seventy-four for her brother in the 
navy ? A deanery for her brother in the church ? Not so. The 
price at which she was valued was her board, her lodging, the at- 
tendance of a man-servant, and two hundred pounds a year. 

The man who, even when hard pressed by hunger, sells his birth- 
right for a mess of pottage, is unwise. But what shall we say of 
him who parts with his birthright, and does not get even the pottage 
in return ? It is not necessary to inquire whether opulence be a n ade- 
quate compensation for the sacrifice of bodily and mental freedom ; 
for Frances Burney paid for leave to be a prisoner and a menial. It 
was evidently understood as one of the terms of her engagement, 
that, while she was a member of the royal household, she was not to 
appear before the public as an author; and, even had there been 
no such understanding, her avocations were such as left her no 
leisure for any considerable intellectual effort. That her place was 
incompatible with her literary pursuits was indeed frankly ac- 
knowledged by the King when she resigned. " She has given up," 
he said, "five years of her pen." That during those five years 
she might, without painful exertion, without any exertion that 
would not have been a pleasure, have earned enough to buy an 
annuity for life much larger than the precarious salary which she 
received at Court, is quite certain. The same income, too, which 



296 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 

in Saint Martin's Street would have afforded her every comfort, 
must have been found scanty at Saint James's. We cannot 
venture to speak confidently of the price of millinery and jewellery; 
but we are greatly deceived if a lady, who had to attend Queen 
Charlotte on many public occasions, could possibly save a farthing 
out of a salary of two hundred a year. The principle of the ar- 
rangement was, in short, simply this, that Frances Burney should 
become a slave, and should be rewarded by being made a 
beggar. 

With what object their Majesties brought her to their palace, 
we must own ourselves unable to conceive. Their object could 
not be to encourage her literary exertions ; for they took her from 
a situation in which it was almost certain that she would write, 
and put her into a situation in which it was impossible for her 
to write. Their object could not be to promote her pecuniary 
interest; for they took her from a situation where she was likely 
to become rich, and put her into a situation in which she could 
not but continue poor. Their object could not be to obtain an 
eminently useful waiting-maid; for it is clear that, though Miss 
Burney was the only woman of her time who could have described 
the death of Harrel, thousands might have been found more expert 
in tying ribands and filling snuff-boxes. To grant her a pension 
on the civil list would have been an act of judicious liberality, 
honourable to the Court. If this was impracticable, the next 
best thing was to let her alone. That the King and Queen meant 
her nothing but kindness, we do not in the least doubt. But 
their kindness was the kindness of persons raised high above the 
mass of mankind, accustomed to be addressed with profound 
deference, accustomed to see all who approach them mortified by 
their coldness and elated by their smiles. They fancied that to 
be noticed by them, to be near them, to serve them, was in itself 
a kind of happiness; and that Frances Burney ought to be full 
of gratitude for being permitted to purchase, by the surrender of 
health, wealth, freedom, domestic affection, and literary fame, 
the privilege of standing behind a royal chair, and holding a pair 
of royal gloves. 

And who can blame them? Who can wonder that princes 
should be under such a delusion, when they are encouraged in it 



FANNY BURNEY AT COURT 



297 



by the very persons who suffer from it most cruelly ? Was it to 
be expected that George the Third and Queen Charlotte should 
understand the interest of Frances Burney better, or promote it 
with more zeal, than herself and her father? No deception was 
practised. The conditions of the house of bondage were set forth 
with all simplicity. The hook was presented without a bait; 
the net was spread in sight of the bird : and the naked hook was 
greedily swallowed, and the silly bird made haste to entangle her- 
self in the net. 

It is not strange indeed that an invitation to Court should have 
caused a fluttering in the bosom of an inexperienced young woman. 
But it was the duty of the parent to watch over the child, and to show 
her that on one side were only infantine vanities and chimerical 
hopes, on the other liberty, peace of mind, affluence, social enjoy- 
ments, honourable distinctions. Strange to say, the only hesitation 
was on the part of Frances. Dr. Burney was transported out of 
himself with delight. Not such are the raptures of a Circassian 
father who has sold his pretty daughter well to a Turkish slave- 
merchant. Yet Dr. Burney was an amiable man, a man of good 
abilities, a man who had seen much of the world. But he seems to 
have thought that going to Court was like going to heaven ; that to 
see princes and princesses was a kind of beatific vision; that the 
exquisite felicity enjoyed by royal persons was not confined to 
themselves, but was communicated by some mysterious efflux or 
reflection to all who were suffered to stand at their toilettes, or to 
bear their trains. He overruled all his daughter's objections, and 
himself escorted her to her prison. The door closed. The key 
was turned. She, looking back with tender regret on all that she 
had left, and forward with anxiety and terror to the new life on 
which she was entering, was unable to speak or stand; and he 
went on his way homeward rejoicing in her marvellous prosperity. 

And now began a slavery of five years, of five years taken from 
the best part of life, and wasted in menial drudgery or in recreations 
duller than even menial drudgery, under galling restraints and 
amidst unfriendly or uninteresting companions. The history of an 
ordinary day was this. Miss Burney had to rise and dress herself 
early, that she might be ready to answer the royal bell, which rang 
at half after seven. Till about eight she attended in the Queen's 



298 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAU LAY 

dressing-room, and had the honour of lacing her august mistress's 
stays, and of putting on the hoop, gown, and neckhandkerchief. 
The morning was chiefly spent in rummaging drawers and laying 
fine clothes in their proper places. Then the Queen was to be 
powdered and dressed for the day. Twice a week her Majesty's 
hair was curled and craped; and this operation appears to have 
added a full hour to the business of the toilette. It was generally 
three before Miss Burney was at liberty. Then she had two 
hours at her own disposal. To these hours we owe great part of 
her Diary. At five she had to attend her colleague, Madame Schwel- 
lenberg, a hateful old toadeater, as illiterate as a chambermaid, as 
proud as a whole German Chapter, rude, peevish, unable to bear 
solitude, unable to conduct herself with common decency in society. 
With this delightful associate, Frances Burney had to dine, and 
pass the evening. The pair generally remained together from 
five to eleven, and often had no other company the whole time, 
except during the hour from eight to nine, when the equerries 
came to tea. If poor Frances attempted to escape to her own apart- 
ment, and to forget her wretchedness over a book, the execrable old 
woman railed and stormed, and complained that she was neglected. 
Yet, when Frances stayed, she was constantly assailed with insolent 
reproaches. Literary fame was, in the eyes of the German crone, 
a blemish, a proof that the person who enjoyed it was meanly born, 
and out of the pale of good society. All her scanty stock of broken 
English was employed to express the contempt with which she 
regarded the author of Evelina and Cecilia. Frances detested 
cards, and indeed knew nothing about them ; but she soon found 
that the least miserable way of passing an evening with Madame 
Schwellenberg was at the card-table, and consented, with patient 
sadness, to give hours, which might have called forth the laughter 
and the tears of many generations, to the king of clubs and the 
knave of spades. Between eleven and twelve the bell rang again. 
Miss Burney had to pass twenty minutes or half an hour in undress- 
ing the Queen, and was then at liberty to retire, and to dream 
that she was chatting with her brother by the quiet hearth in Saint 
Martin's Street, that she was the centre of an admiring assemblage 
at Mrs. Crewe's, that Burke was calling her the first woman of the 
age, or that Dilly was giving her a cheque for two thousand guineas. 



FANNY BURNEY AT COURT 



299 



Men, we must suppose, are less patient than women ; for we are 
utterly at a loss to conceive how any human being could endure 
such a life, while there remained a vacant garret in Grub Street, 
a crossing in want of a sweeper, a parish work-house, or a parish 
vault. And it was for such a life that Frances Burney had given 
up liberty and peace, a happy fireside, attached friends, a wide 
and splendid circle of acquaintance, intellectual pursuits in which 
she was qualified to excel, and the sure hope of what to her would 
have been affluence. 

There is nothing new under the sun. The last great master 
of Attic eloquence and Attic wit has left us a forcible and touch- 
ing description of the misery of a man of letters, who, lured by 
hopes similar to those of Frances, had entered the service of one 
of the magnates of Rome. "Unhappy that I am, " cries the victim 
of his own childish ambition: ''would nothing content me but that 
I must leave mine old pursuits and mine old companions, and the 
life which was without care, and sleep which had no limits save 
mine own pleasure, and the walks which I was free to take where I 
listed, and fling myself into the lowest pit of a dungeon like this ? 
And, O God ! for what ? Was there no way by which I might have 
enjoyed in freedom comforts even greater than those which I now 
earn by servitude ? Like a lion which has been made so tame that 
men may lead him about by a thread, I am dragged up and down, 
with broken and humbled spirit, at the heels of those to whom, in 
mine own domain, I should have been an object of awe and wonder. 
And, worst of all, I feel that here I gain no credit, that here I give 
no pleasure. The talents and accomplishments, which charmed a 
far different circle, are here out of place. I am rude in the arts of 
palaces, and can ill bear comparison with those whose calling, from 
their youth up, has been to flatter and to sue. Have I, then, two 
lives, that, after I have wasted one in the service of others, there 
may yet remain to me a second, which I may live unto myself ? " 

Now and then, indeed, events occurred which disturbed the 
wretched monotony of Frances Burney's life. The Court moved 
from Kew to Windsor, and from Windsor back to Kew. One dull 
colonel went out of waiting, and another dull colonel came into 
waiting. An impertinent servant made a blunder about tea, and 
caused a misunderstanding between the gentlemen and the ladies. 



300 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAU LAY 



A half-witted French Protestant minister talked oddly about con- 
jugal fidelity. An unlucky member of the household mentioned 
a passage in the Morning Herald, reflecting on the Queen; and 
forthwith Madame Schwellenberg began to storm in bad English, 
and told him that he made her ''what you call perspire!" 

A more important occurrence was the King's visit to Oxford. 
Miss Burney went in the royal train to Nuneham, was utterly 
neglected there in the crowd, and could with difficulty find a 
servant to show the way to her bedroom, or a hairdresser to arrange 
her curls. She had the honour of entering Oxford in the last of 
a long string of carriages which formed the royal procession, of 
walking after the Queen all day through refectories and chapels, 
and of standing, half dead with fatigue and hunger, while her august 
mistress was seated at an excellent cold collation. At Magdalen 
College, Frances was left for a moment in a parlour, where she sank 
down on a chair. A good-natured equerry saw that she was ex- 
hausted, and shared with her some apricots and bread, which he 
had wisely put into his pockets. At that moment the door opened ; 
the Queen entered ; the wearied attendants sprang up ; the bread 
and fruit were hastily concealed. "I found," says poor Miss 
Burney, "that our appetites were to be supposed annihilated, at the 
same moment that our strength was to be invincible." 

Yet Oxford, seen even under such disadvantages, ''revived in 
her," to use her own words, " a consciousness to pleasure which had 
long lain nearly dormant." She forgot, during one moment, 
that she was a waiting-maid, and felt as a woman of true genius 
might be expected to feel amidst venerable remains of antiquity, 
beautiful works of art, vast repositories of knowledge, and me- 
morials of the illustrious dead. Had she still been what she was 
before her father induced her to take the most fatal step of her 
life, we can easily imagine what pleasure she would have derived 
from a visit to the noblest of English cities. She might, indeed, 
have been forced to travel in a hack chaise, and might not have 
worn so fine a gown of Chambery gauze as that in which she tot- 
tered after the royal party ; but with what delight would she have 
then paced the cloisters of Magdalen, compared the antique 
gloom of Merton with the splendour of Christ Church, and looked 
down from the dome of the Radcliffe Library on the magnifi- 



FANNY BURNEY AT COURT 301 

cent sea of turrets and battlements below! How gladly would 
learned men have laid aside for a few hours Pindar's Odes and 
Aristotle's Ethics to escort the author of Cecilia from college to 
college ! What neat little banquets would she have found set out 
in their monastic cells ! With what eagerness would pictures, 
medals, and illuminated missals have been brought forth from the 
most mysterious cabinets for her amusement! How much she 
would have had to hear and to tell about Johnson, as she 
walked over Pembroke, and about Reynolds, in the antechapel 
of New College! But these indulgences were not for one who 
had sold herself into bondage. 

About eighteen months after the visit to Oxford, another event 
diversified the wearisome life which Frances led at Court. 
Warren Hastings was brought to the bar of the House of Peers. 
The Queen and Princesses were present when the trial commenced, 
and Miss Burney was permitted to attend. During the subsequent 
proceedings a day rule for the same purpose was occasionally 
granted to her ; for the Queen took the strongest interest in the trial, 
and when she could not go herself to Westminster Hall, liked to 
receive a report of what had passed from a person of singular powers 
of observation, and who was, moreover, acquainted with some 
of the most distinguished managers. The portion of the Diary 
which relates to this celebrated proceeding is lively and picturesque. 
Yet we read it, we own, with pain ; for it seems to us to prove that 
the fine understanding of Frances Burney was beginning to feel the 
pernicious influence of a mode of life which is as incompatible 
with health of mind as the air of the Pomptine marshes with health 
of body. From the first day she espouses the cause of Hastings 
with a presumptuous vehemence and acrimony quite inconsistent 
with the modesty and suavity of her ordinary deportment. She 
shudders when Burke enters the Hall at the head of the Commons. 
She pronounces him the cruel oppressor of an innocent man. She 
is at a loss to conceive how the managers can look at the defendant, 
and not blush. Windham comes to her from the manager's box, 
to offer her refreshment. ''But," says she, ''I could not break 
bread with him. " Then, again, she exclaims, ''Ah, Mr. Windham, 
how came you ever engaged in so cruel, so unjust a cause ? " " Mr. 
Burke saw me," she says, "and he bowed with the most marked 



302 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 



civility of manner." This, be it observed, was just after his 
opening speech, a speech which had produced a mighty effect, and 
which, certainly, no other orator that ever lived, could have made. 
''My curtsy," she continues, "was the most ungrateful, distant 
and cold ; I could not do otherwise ; so hurt I felt to see him the 
head of such a cause. " Now, not only had Burke treated her with 
constant kindness, but the very last act which he performed on the 
day on which he was turned out of the Pay Office, about four years 
before this trial, was to make Dr. Burney organist of Chelsea Hos- 
pital. When, at the Westminster election. Dr. Burney was divided 
between his gratitude for this favor and his Tory opinions, Burke 
in the noblest manner disclaimed all right to exact a sacrifice of 
principle. "You have little or no obligations to me," he wrote; 
"but if you had as many as I really wish it were in my power, as it 
is certainly in my desire, to lay on you, I hope you do not think me 
capable of conferring them, in order to subject your mind or your 
affairs to a painful and mischievous servitude. " Was this a man to 
be uncivilly treated by a daughter of Dr. Burney, because she chose 
to differ from him respecting a vast and most complicated question, 
which he had studied deeply during many years, and which she had 
never studied at all ? It is clear, from Miss Burney 'sown narrative, 
that when she behaved so unkindly to Mr. Burke, she did not even 
know of what Hastings was accused. One thing, however, she 
must have known, that Burke had been able to convince a House of 
Commons, bitterly prejudiced against himself, that the charges 
were well founded, and that Pitt and Dundas had concurred 
with Fox and Sheridan, in supporting the impeachment. Surely 
a woman of far inferior abilities to Miss Burney might have been 
expected to see that this never could have happened unless there had 
been a strong case against the late Governor- General. And there 
was, as all reasonable men now admit, a strong case against him. 
That there were great public services to be set off against his great 
crimes is perfectly true. But his services and his crimes were 
equally unknown to the lady who so confidently asserted his perfect 
innocence, and imputed to his accusers, that is to say, to all the 
greatest men of all parties in the State, not merely error, but gross 
injustice and barbarity. 

She had, it is true, occasionally seen Mr. Hastings, and had 



FANNY BURNEY AT COURT 3O3 

found his manners and conversation agreeable. But surely she 
could not be so weak as to infer from the gentleness of his deport- 
ment in a drawing-room, that he was incapable of committing a 
great State crime, under the influence of ambition and revenge. A 
silly Miss, fresh from a boarding-school might fall into such a 
mistake; but the woman who had drawn the character of Mr. 
Monckton should have known better. 

The truth is that she had been too long at Court. She was 
sinking into a slavery worse than that of the body. The iron 
was beginning to enter into the soul. Accustomed during many 
months to watch the eye of a mistress, to receive with boundless 
gratitude the slightest mark of royal condescension, to feel wretched 
at every symptom of royal displeasure, to associate only with 
spirits long tamed and broken in, she was degenerating into some- 
thing fit for her place. Queen Charlotte was a violent partisan of 
Hastings, had received presents from him, and had so far departed 
from the severity of her virtue as to lend her countenance to his 
wife, whose conduct had certainly been as reprehensible as that 
of any of the frail beauties who were then rigidly excluded from the 
English Court. The King, it was well known, took the same side. 
To the King and Queen all the members of the household looked 
submissively for guidance. The impeachment, therefore, was an 
atrocious persecution ; the managers were rascals ; the defendant 
was the most deserving and the worst used man in the kingdom. 
This was the cant of the whole palace, from Gold Stick in Waiting, 
down to the Table-Deckers and Yeoman of the Silver Scullery ; and 
Miss Burney canted like the rest, though in livelier tones, and with 
less bitter feelings. 

The account which she has given of the King's illness contains 
much excellent narrative and description, and will, we think, be as 
much valued by the historians of a future age as any equal por- 
tion of Pepys's or Evelyn's Diaries. That account shows also 
how affectionate and compassionate her nature was. But it 
shows also, we must say, that her way of life was rapidly impair- 
ing her powers of reasoning and her sense of justice. We do 
not mean to discuss, in this place, the question, whether the 
views of Mr. Pitt or those of Mr. Fox respecting the regency were 
the more correct. It is, indeed, quite needless to discuss that 



304 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 

question : for the censure of Miss Burney falls alike on Pitt and 
Fox, on majority and minority. She is angry with the House of 
Commons for presuming to inquire whether the King was mad or 
not, and whether there was a chance of his recovering his senses. 
''A melancholy day," she writes; "news bad both at home and 
abroad. At home the dear unhappy king still worse ; abroad new 
examinations voted of the physicians. Good heavens ! what an 
insult does this seem from Parliamentary power, to investigate 
and bring forth to the world every circumstance of such a malady 
as is ever held sacred to secrecy in the most private families ! How 
indignant we all feel here, no words can say. " It is proper to ob- 
serve, that the motion which roused all this indignation at Kew 
was made by Mr. Pitt himself. We see, therefore, that the loyalty 
of the Minister, who was then generally regarded as the most heroic 
champion of his Prince, was lukewarm indeed when compared with 
the boiling zeal which filled the pages of the backstairs and the 
women of the bedchamber. Of the Regency Bill, Pitt's own bill, 
Miss Burney speaks with horror. ''I shuddered," she says, "to 
hear it named." And again, "Oh, how dreadful will be the day 
when that unhappy bill takes place ! I cannot approve the plan of 
it." The truth is that Mr. Pitt, whether a wise and upright states- 
man or not, was a statesman ; and whatever motives he might have 
for imposing restrictions on the regent, felt that in someway or other 
there must be some provision made for the execution of some part 
of the kingly office, or that no government would be left in the 
country. But this was a matter of which the household never 
thought. It never occurred, as far as we can see, to the Exons and 
Keepers of the Robes, that it was necessary that there should be 
somewhere or other a power in the State to pass laws, to pre- 
serve order, to pardon criminals, to fill up offices, to negotiate with 
foreign governments, to command the army and navy. Nay, these 
enlightened politicians, and Miss Burney among the rest, seem to 
have thought that any person who considered the subject with 
reference to the public interest, showed himself to be a bad-hearted 
man. Nobody wonders at this in a gentleman usher ; but it is 
melancholy to see genius sinking into such debasement. 

During more than two years after the King's recovery, Frances 
dragged on a miserable existence at the palace. The consolations 



FANNY BURNEY AT COURT 



305 



which had for a time mitigated the wretchedness of servitude were 
one by one withdrawn. Mrs. Delany, whose society had been a 
great resource when the Court was at Windsor, was now dead. One 
of the gentlemen of the royal establishment, Colonel Digby, appears 
to have been a man of sense, of taste, of some reading, and of pre- 
possessing manners. Agreeable associates were scarce in the 
prison house, and he and Miss Burney therefore naturally became 
attached to each other. She owns that she valued him as a friend ; 
and it would not have been strange if his attentions had led her to 
entertain for him a sentiment warmer than friendship. He quitted 
the Court, and married in a way which astonished Miss Burney 
greatly, and which evidently wounded her feelings, and lowered 
him in her esteem. The palace grew duller and duller ; Madame 
Schwellenberg became more and more savage and insolent; and 
now the health of poor Frances began to give way ; and all who 
saw her pale face, her emaciated figure, and her feeble walk, pre- 
dicted that her sufferings would soon be over. 

Frances uniformly speaks of her royal mistress, and of the prin- 
cesses, with respect and affection. The princesses seem to have 
well deserved all the praise which is bestowed on them in the Diary. 
They were, we doubt not, most amiable women. But ''the sweet 
Queen, " as she is constantly called in these volumes, is not by any 
means an object of admiration to us. She had undoubtedly sense 
enough to know what kind of deportment suited her high station, 
and self-command enough to maintain that deportment invariably. 
She was, in her intercourse with Miss Bu*rney, generally gracious 
and affable, sometimes, when displeased, cold and reserved, but 
never, under any circumstances, rude, peevish, or violent. She 
knew how to dispense, gracefully and skilfully, those little civilities 
which, when paid by a sovereign, are prized at many times their 
intrinsic value ; how to pay a compliment ; how to lend a book ; how 
to ask after a relation. But she seems to have been utterly regard- 
less of the comfort, the health, the life of her attendants, when her 
own convenience was concerned. Weak, feverish, hardly able to 
stand, Frances had still to rise before seven, in order to dress the 
sweet Queen, and to sit up till midnight, in order to undress the 
sweet Queen. The indisposition of the handmaid could not, and 
did not, escape the notice of her royal mistress. But the established 



3o6 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAU LAY 

doctrine of the Court was, that all sickness was to be considered as 
a pretence until it proved fatal. The only way in which the invalid 
could clear herself from the suspicion of malingering, as it is called 
in the army, was to go on lacing and unlacing till she fell down dead 
at the royal feet. ''This," Miss Burney wrote, when she was 
suffering cruelly from sickness, watching, and labour, "is by no 
means from hardness of heart ; far otherwise. There is no hard- 
ness of heart in any one of them; but it is prejudice, and want of 
personal experience. " 

Many strangers sympathised with the bodily and mental suffer- 
ings of this distinguished woman. All who saw her saw that her 
frame was sinking, that her heart was breaking. The last, it 
should seem, to observe the change was her father. At length, in 
spite of himself, his eyes were opened. In May 1790, his daughter 
had an interview of three hours with him, the only long interview 
which they had had since he took her to Windsor in 1786. She 
told him that she was miserable, that she was worn with attendance 
and want of sleep, that she had no comfort in life, nothing to love, 
nothing to hope, that her family and her friends were to her as 
though they were not, and were remembered by her as men remem- 
ber the dead. From daybreak to midnight the same killing labour, 
the same recreations, more hateful than labour itself, followed each 
other without variety, without any interval of liberty and repose. 

The Doctor was greatly dejected by this news ; but was too good- 
natured a man not to say that, if she wished to resign, his house 
and arms were open to her. Still, however, he could not bear to re- 
move her from the Court. His veneration for royalty amounted 
in truth to idolatry. It can be compared only to the grovelling 
superstition of those Syrian devotees who made their children pass 
through the fire to Moloch. When he induced his daughter to 
accept the place of keeper of the robes, he entertained, as she tells us, 
a hope that some worldly advantage or other, not set down in the 
contract of service, would be the result of her connection with the 
Court. What advantage he expected we do not know, nor did he 
probably know himself. But, whatever he expected, he certainly 
got nothing. Miss Burney had been hired for board, lodging, 
and two hundred a year. Board, lodging, and two hundred a 
year, she had duly received. We have looked carefully through 



FANNY BURNEY AT COURT 307 

the Diary, in the hope of finding some trace of those extraordinary- 
benefactions on which the Doctor reckoned. But we can dis- 
cover only a promise, never performed, of a gown: and for this 
promise Miss Burney was expected to return thanks, such as 
might have suited the beggar with whom Saint Martin, in the legend, 
divided his cloak. The experience of four years was, however, 
insufficient to dispel the illusion which had taken possession of the 
Doctor's mind ; and between the dear father and the sweet Queen, 
there seemed to be little doubt that some day or other Frances 
would drop down a corpse. Six months had elapsed since the inter- 
view between the parent and the daughter. The resignation was 
not sent in. The sufferer grew worse and worse. She took bark ; 
but it soon ceased to produce a beneficial effect. She was stimulated 
with wine ; she was soothed with opium ; but in vain. Her breath 
began to fail. The whisper that she was in a decline spread through 
the Court. The pains in her side became so severe that she was 
forced to crawl from the card-table of the old Fury to whom she was 
tethered, three or four times in an evening, for the purpose of taking 
hartshorn. Had she been a negro slave, a humane planter would 
have excused her from work. But her Majesty showed no mercy. 
Thrice a day the accursed bell still rang ; the Queen was still to be 
dressed for the morning at seven, and to be dressed for the day at 
noon, and to be undressed at midnight. 

But there had arisen, in literary and fashionable society, a 
general feeling of compassion for Miss Burney, and of indigna- 
tion against both her father and the Queen. ''Is it possible," 
said a great French lady to the Doctor, ''that your daughter is 
in a situation where she is never allowed a holiday?" Horace 
Walpole wrote to Frances, to express his sympathy. Boswell, 
boiling over with good-natured rage, almost forced an entrance 
into the palace to see her. "My dear ma'am, why do you stay? 
It won't do, ma'am; you must resign. We can put up with 
it no longer. Some very violent measures, I assure you, will 
be taken. We shall address Dr. Burney in a body." Burke 
and Reynolds, though less noisy, were zealous in the same cause. 
Windham spoke to Dr. Burney; but found him still irresolute. 
"I will set the club upon him," cried Windham; "Miss Burney 
has some very true admirers there, and I am sure they will eagerly 



3o8 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 

assist." Indeed the Burney family seem to have been appre- 
hensive that some public affront such as the Doctor's unpar- 
donable folly, to use the mildest term, had richly deserved, 
would be put upon him. The medical men spoke out, and plainly 
told him that his daughter must resign or die. 

At last paternal affection, medical authority, and the voice 
of all London crying shame, triumphed over Dr. Burney 's love 
of courts. He determined that Frances should write a letter 
of resignation. It was with difficulty that, though her life was 
at stake, she mustered spirit to put the paper into the Queen's 
hands. ''I could not," so runs the Diary, "summon courage to 
present my memorial; my heart always failed me from seeing 
the Queen's entire freedom from such an expectation. For 
though I was frequently so ill in her presence that I could hardly 
stand, I saw she concluded me, while life remained, inevitably 
hers." 

At last with a trembling hand the paper was delivered. Then 
came the storm. Juno, as in the jEneid, delegated the work 
of vengeance to Alecto. The Queen was calm and gentle; but 
Madame Schwellenberg raved like a maniac in the incurable 
ward of Bedlam ! Such insolence ! Such ingratitude ! Such 
folly ! Would Miss Burney bring utter destruction on herself 
and her family? Would she throw away the inestimable ad- 
vantage of royal protection? Would she part with privileges 
which, once relinquished, could never be regained? It was 
idle to talk of health and life. If people could not live in the 
palace, the best thing that could befall them was to die in it. 
The resignation was not accepted. The language of the medical 
men became stronger and stronger. Dr. Burney 's parental fears 
were fully roused; and he explicitly declared, in a letter meant 
to be shown to the Queen, that his daughter must retire. The 
Schwellenberg raged like a wild cat. "A scene almost horrible 
ensued," says Miss Burney. "She was too much enraged for 
disguise, and uttered the most furious expressions of indignant 
contempt at our proceedings. I am sure she would gladly have 
confined us both in the Bastile, had England such a misery, as 
a fit place to bring us to ourselves, from a daring so outrageous 
against imperial wishes." This passage deserves notice, as being 



FANNY BURNEY AT COURT 



309 



the only one in the Diary, so far as we have observed, which 
shows Miss Burney to have been aware that she was a native of 
a free country, that she could not be pressed for a waiting-maid 
against her will, and that she had just as good a right to live, 
if she chose, in Saint Martin's Street, as Queen Charlotte had to 
live at Saint James's. 

The Queen promised that, after the next birthday. Miss Bur- 
ney should be set at liberty. But the promise was ill kept; 
and her Majesty showed displeasure at being reminded of it. 
At length Frances was informed that in a fortnight her attend- 
ance should cease. "I heard this," she says, "with a fearful 
presentiment I should surely never go through another fort- 
night, in so weak and languishing and painful a state of health. 
... As the time of separation approached, the Queen's cor- 
diality rather diminished, and traces of internal displeasure 
appeared sometimes, arising from an opinion I ought rather to 
have struggled on, live or die, than to quit her. Yet I am sure 
she saw how poor was my own chance, except by a change in 
the mode of life, and at least ceased to wonder, though she could 
not approve." Sweet Queen! What noble candour, to admit 
that the undutifulness of people, who did not think the honour 
of adjusting her tuckers worth the sacrifice of their own lives, 
was, though highly criminal, not altogether unnatural ! 

We perfectly understand her Majesty's contempt for the lives 
of others where her own pleasure was concerned. But what 
pleasure she can have found in having Miss Burney about her, 
it is not so easy to comprehend. That Miss Burney was an 
eminently skilful keeper of the robes is not very probable. Few 
women, indeed, had paid less attention to dress. Now and 
then, in the course of five years, she had been asked to read 
aloud or to write a copy of verses. But better readers might 
easily have been found: and her verses were worse than even 
the Poet Laureate's Birthday Odes. Perhaps that economy, 
which was among her Majesty's most conspicuous virtues, had 
something to do with her conduct on this occasion. Miss Bur- 
ney had never hinted that she expected a retiring pension; and 
indeed would gladly have given the little that she had for freedom. 
But her Majesty knew what the public thought, and what became 



3IO THOMAS CARLYLE 

her own dignity. She could not for very shame suffer a woman of 
distinguished genius, who had quitted a lucrative career to wait 
on her, who had served her faithfully for a pittance during five 
years, and whose constitution had been impaired by labour and 
watching, to leave the Court without some mark of royal liber- 
ality. George the Third, who, on all occasions where Miss Bur- 
ney was concerned, seems to have behaved like an honest, good- 
natured gentleman, felt this, and said plainly that she was en- 
titled to a provision. At length, in return for all the misery 
which she had undergone, and for the health which she had sac- 
rificed, an annuity of one hundred pounds was granted her, 
dependent on the Queen's pleasure. 

Then the prison was opened, and Frances was free once more. 
Johnson, as Burke observed, might have added a striking page 
to his poem on the Vanity of Human Wishes, if he had lived to 
see his little Burney as she went into the palace and as she came 
out of it. 

THOMAS CARLYLE 

TORRIJOS AND JOHN STERLING 

[From The 'Life of John Sterling, Part I., Chap, x., 1851. Centenary 
Edition, Chapman and Hall, London, 1897. 

Sterling, John (i 806-1 844), author; son of Edward Sterling; of 
Trinity College, then of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, 1824-7; ^^ 'apostle' and 
speaker at the union ; through his tutor, Julius Charles Hare, came to know- 
Coleridge and Wordsworth; friend of Frederick Denison Maurice and 
Richard Chenevix Trench; with Maurice conducted the 'Athenaeum,' July 
to December 1828; meditated accompanying volunteer expedition against 
Ferdinand VII of Spain, but stayed behind to marry, 1830; manager of 
sugar estate in St. Vincent, 1831-2; studied philosophy in Germany, 1833; 
curate of J. C. Hare at Hurstmonceaux, 1834-5; became acquainted with 
Carlyle, 1835; contributed to 'Blackwood's Magazine,' 1837-8, and 'Lon- 
don and Westminster Review'; Sterling Club (founded, 1838) called after 
him; in Rome, 1838-9; introduced to Caroline Fox's circle, 1839; reviewed 
Tennyson's 'Poems' in 'Quarterly,' September 1842; his 'Essays and Tales' 
edited by Juhus Charles Hare, 1848; rendered famous by Carlyle's biog- 
raphy, 1851. — Index and Epitome of D. N . B. 

"Nor shall the irremediable drawback that Sterling was not current in 
the Newspapers, that he achieved neither what the world calls greatness nor 
what intrinsically is such, altogether discourage me. What his natural size. 



TORRIJOS AND JOHN STERLING 



311 



and natural and accidental limits were, will gradually appear, if my sketching 
be successful. And I have remarked that a true delineation of the smallest 
man, and his scene of pilgrimage through life, is capable of interesting the 
greatest man; that all men are to an unspeakable degree brothers, each man's 
life a strange emblem of every man's; and that Human Portraits, faithfully 
drawn, are of all pictures the welcomest on human walls. Monitions and 
moralities enough may lie in this small Work, if honestly written and honestly 
read ; — and, in particular, if any image of John Sterling and his Pilgrimage 
through our poor Nineteenth Century be one day wanted by the world, and 
they can find some shadow of a true image here, my swift scribbling (which 
shall be very swift and immediate) may prove useful by and by. 



"Nay, what of men or of the world? Here, visible to myself, for some 
while, was a brilKant human presence, distinguishable, honourable and 
lovable amid the dim common populations; among the million little beauti- 
ful, once more a beautiful human soul: whom I, among others, recognised 
and lovingly walked with, while the years and the hours were. Sitting now 
by his tomb in thoughtful mood, the new times bring a new duty for me. 
'Why write the Life of Sterling?' I imagine I had a commission higher 
than the world's, the dictate of Nature herself, to do what is now done. Sic 
prosit" — Thomas Carlyle, The Life of Sterling, from the first and last 
chapters.] 

Torrijos, who had now in 1829 been here some four or five 
years, having come over in 1824, had from the first enjoyed 
a superior reception in England. Possessing not only a language 
to speak, which few of the others did, but manifold experiences 
courtly, military, diplomatic, with fine natural faculties, and 
high Spanish manners tempered into cosmopolitan, he had been 
welcomed in various circles of society; and found, perhaps 
he alone of those Spaniards, a certain human companionship 
among persons of some standing in this country. With the 
elder SterHngs, among others, he had made acquaintance; be- 
came familiar in the social circle at South Place, and was much 
esteemed there. With Madam Torrijos, who also was a person 
of amiable and distinguished qualities, an affectionate friend- 
ship grew up on the part of Mrs. Sterling, which ended only 
with the death of these two ladies. John Sterling, on arriving 
in London from his University work, naturally inherited what 
he liked to take-up of this relation : and in the lodgings in Regent 
Street, and the democratico-literary element there, Torrijos 
became a very prominent, and at length almost the central 
object. 



312 THOMAS CARLYLE 

The man himself, it is well known, was a valiant, gallant man ; 
of lively intellect, of noble chivalrous character: fine talents, 
fine accomplishments, all grounding themselves on a certain 
rugged veracity, recommended him to the discerning. He had 
begun youth in the Court of Ferdinand; had gone on in Well- 
ington and other arduous, victorious and unvictorious, sol- 
dierings; familiar in camps and council-rooms, in presence- 
chambers and in prisons. He knew romantic Spain ; — he was 
himself, standing withal in the vanguard of Freedom's fight, a 
kind of living romance. Infinitely interesting to John Sterling, 
for one. 

It was to Torrijos that the poor Spaniards of Somers Town 
looked mainly, in their helplessness, for every species of help. 
Torrijos, it was hoped, would yet lead them into Spain and 
glorious victory there; meanwhile here in England, under de- 
feat, he was their captain and sovereign in another painfully in- 
verse sense. To whom, in extremity, everybody might apply. 
When all present resources failed, and the exchequer was quite 
out, there still remained Torrijos. Torrijos has to find new 
resources for his destitute patriots, find loans, find Spanish les- 
sons for them among his English friends: in all which chari- 
table operations, it need not be said, John Sterling was his fore- 
most man; zealous to empty his own purse for the object; im- 
petuous in rushing hither or thither to enlist the aid of others, 
and find lessons oi: something that would do. His friends, of 
course, had to assist; the Bartons, among others, were wont to 
assist ; — and I have heard that the fair Susan, stirring-up her 
indolent enthusiasm into practicality, was very successful in 
finding Spanish lessons, and the like, for these distressed men. 
Sterling and his friends were yet new in this business; but Tor- 
rijos and the others were getting old in it, — and doubtless weary 
and almost desperate of it. They had now been seven years 
in it, many of them; and were asking, When will the end be? 

Torrijos is described as a man of excellent discernment: who 
knows how long he had repressed the unreasonable schemes 
of his followers, and turned a deaf ear to the temptings of falla- 
cious hope? But there comes at length a sum-total of oppres- 
sive burdens which is intolerable, which tempts the wisest to- 



TORRIJOS AND JOHN STERLING 313 

wards fallacies for relief. These weary groups, pacing the Euston- 
Square pavements, had often said in their despair, "Were not 
death in battle better? Here are we slowly mouldering into 
nothingness; there we might reach it rapidly, in flaming splen- 
dour. Flame, either of victory to Spain and us, or of a patriot 
death, the sure harbinger of victory to Spain. Flame fit to kindle 
a fire which no Ferdinand, with all his Inquisitions and Charles- 
Tenths, could put out." Enough, in the end of 1829, Torrijos 
himself had yielded to this pressure; and hoping against hope, 
persuaded himself that if he could but land in the South of Spain 
with a small patriot band well armed and well resolved, a band 
carrying fire in its heart, — then Spain, all inflammable as touch- 
wood, and groaning indignantly under its brutal tyrant, might 
blaze wholly into flame round him, and incalculable victory be 
won. Such was his conclusion; not sudden, yet surely not 
deliberate either, — desperate rather, and forced-on by circum- 
stances. He thought with himself that, considering Somers 
Town and considering Spain, the terrible chance was worth try- 
ing; that this big game of Fate, go how it might, was one which 
the omens credibly declared he and these poor Spaniards ought 
to play. 

His whole industries and energies were thereupon bent to- 
wards starting the said game; and his thought and continual 
speech and song now was. That if he had a few thousand pounds 
to buy arms, to freight a ship and make the other preparations, 
he and these poor gentlemen, and Spain and the world, were 
made men and a saved Spain and world. What talks and con- 
sultations in the apartment in Regent Street, during those winter 
days of 1829-30; setting into open conflagration the young 
democracy that was wont to assemble there 1 Of which there 
is now left next to no remembrance. For Sterling never spoke 
a w^ord of this affair in after days, nor was any of the actors much 
tempted to speak. We can understand too well that here were 
young fervid hearts in an explosive condition; young rash heads, 
sanctioned by a man's experienced head. Here at last shall 
enthusiasm and theory become practice and fact; fiery dreams 
are at last permitted to realise themselves; and now is the time 
or never I —How the Coleridge moonshine comported itself 



314 THOMAS CARLYLE 

amid these hot telluric flames, or whether it had not yet begun 
to play there (which I rather doubt), must be left to conjecture. 

Mr. Hare speaks of Sterling 'sailing over to St. Valery in an 
open boat along with others,' upon one occasion, in this enter- 
prise ; — in the final English scene of it, I suppose. Which 
is very possible. Unquestionably there was adventure enough 
of other kinds for it, and running to and fro with all his speed 
on behalf of it, during these months of his history ! Money 
was subscribed, collected: the young Cambridge democrats 
were all a-blaze to assist Torrijos; nay certain of them decided 
to go with him, — and went. Only, as yet, the funds were rather 
incomplete. And here, as I learn from a good hand, is the se- 
cret history of their becoming complete. Which, as we are upon 
the subject, I had better give. But for the following circumstance, 
they had perhaps never been completed; nor had the rash enter- 
prise, or its catastrophe, so influential on the rest of Sterling's 
life, taken place at all. 

A certain Lieutenant Robert Boyd, of the Indian Army, an 
Ulster Irishman, a cousin of Sterling's, had received some affront, 
or otherwise taken some disgust in that service; had thrown-up 
his commission in consequence; and returned home, about this 
time, with intent to seek another course of life. Having only, 
for outfit, these impatient ardours, some experience in Indian 
drill-exercise, and five thousand pounds of inheritance, he found 
the enterprise attended with difficulties; and was somewhat 
at a loss how to dispose of himself. Some young Ulster com- 
rade, in a partly similar situation, had pointed out to him that 
there lay in a certain neighbouring creek of the Irish coast, a 
worn-out royal gun-brig condemned to sale, to be had dog-cheap : 
this he proposed that they two, or in fact Boyd with his five thou- 
sand pounds, should buy ; that they should refit and arm and man 
it; — and sail a-privateering "to the Eastern Archipelago," Philip- 
pine Isles, or I know not where ; and so conquer the golden fleece. 

Boyd naturally paused a little at this great proposal; did not 
quite reject it; came across, with it and other fine projects and 
impatiences fermenting in his head, to London, there to see and 
consider. It was in the months when the Torrijos enterprise 
was in the birth-throes; crying wildly for capital, of all things. 



TORRIJOS AND JOHN STERLING 315 

Boyd naturally spoke of his projects to Sterling, — of his gun- 
brig lying in the Irish creek, among others. Sterling naturally 
said, ''If you want an adventure of the Sea-king sort, and propose 
to lay your money and your life into such a game, here is Torrijos 
and Spain at his back ; here is a golden fleece to conquer, worth 
twenty Eastern Archipelagos." — Boyd and Torrijos quickly 
met; quickly bargained. Boyd's money was to go in purchas- 
ing, and storing with a certain stock of arms and etceteras, a small 
ship in the Thames, which should carry Boyd with Torrijos and 
the adventurers to the south coast of Spain; and there, the game 
once played and won, Boyd was to have promotion enough, — 
'the colonelcy of a Spanish cavalry regiment,' for one express 
thing. What exact share Sterling had in this negotiation, or 
whether he did not even take the prudent side and caution Boyd 
to be wary, I know not ; but it was he that brought the parties 
together; and all his friends knew, in silence, that to the end 
of his life he painfully remembered that fact. 

And so a ship was hired, or purchased, in the Thames; due 
furnishings began to be executed in it; arms and stores were 
gradually got on board; Torrijos with his Fifty picked Span- 
iards, in the mean while, getting ready. This was in the spring 
of 1830. Boyd's 5000/. was the grand nucleus of finance; but 
vigorous subscription was carried on likewise in Sterling's young 
democratic circle, or wherever a member of it could find access; 
not without considerable result, and with a zeal that may be 
imagined. Nay, as above hinted, certain of these young men 
decided, not to give their money only, but themselves along with 
it, as democratic volunteers and soldiers of progress; among 
whom, it need not be said. Sterling intended to be foremost. 
Busy weeks with him, those spring ones of the year 1830! 
Through this small Note, accidentally preserved to us, addressed 
to his friend Barton, we obtain a curious glance into the sub- 
terranean workshop: 

^To Charles Barton, Esq., Dorset Sq., Regent^s Park. 

[No date; apparently March or February 1830.] 

'My dear Charles, — I have wanted to see you to talk to 
you about my foreign affairs. If you are going to be in Lon- 



3l6 THOMAS CARLYLE 

don for a few days, I believe you can be very useful to me, at 
a considerable expense and trouble to yourself, in the way of 
buying accoutrements; inter alia, a sword and a saddle, — not 
you will understand, for my own use. 

'Things are going on very well, but are very, even fright- 
fully near ; only be quiet ! Pray would you, in case of neces- 
sity, take a free passage to Holland, next week or the week 
after ; stay two or three days, and come back, all expenses paid ? 

If you write to B at Cambridge, tell him above all things 

to hold his tongue. If you are near Palace Yard to-morrow 
before two, pray come see me. Do not come on purpose; 
especially as I may perhaps be away, and at all events shall not 
be there until eleven, nor perhaps till rather later. 

'I fear I shall have alarmed your Mother by my irruption. 
Forgive me for that and all my exactions from you. If the next 
month were over, I should not have to trouble any one. — Yours 
affectionately, 

'J. Sterling.' 

Busy weeks indeed ; and a glowing smithy-light coming through 
the chinks ! — The romance of Arthur Coningshy lay written, 
or half -written, in his desk; and here, in his heart and among 
his hands, was an acted romance and unknown catastrophes 
keeping pace with that. 

Doubts from the doctors, for his health was getting ominous, 
threw some shade over the adventure. Reproachful reminis- 
cences of Coleridge and Theosophy were natural too; then fond 
regrets for Literature and its glories: if you act your romance, 
how can you also write it? Regrets, and reproachful reminis- 
cences, from Art and Theosophy; perhaps some tenderer regrets 
withal. A crisis in life had come; when, of innumerable pos- 
sibilities one possibility was to be elected king, and to swallow 
all the rest, the rest of course made noise enough, and swelled 
themselves to their biggest. 

Meanwhile the ship was fast getting ready: on a certain day, 
it was to drop quietly down the Thames; then touch at Deal, 
and take on board Torrijos and his adventurers, who were to 



TORRIJOS AND JOHN STERLING 317 

be in waiting and on the outlook for them there. Let every man 
lay-in his accoutrements, then; let every man make his pack- 
ages, his arrangements and farewells. Sterling went to take 
leave of Miss Barton. "You are going, then; to Spain? To 
rough it amid the storms of war and perilous insurrection; and 
with that weak health of yours ; and — we shall never see you 
more, then ! " Miss Barton, all her gaiety gone, the dimpling 
softness become liquid sorrow, and the musical ringing voice 
one wail of woe, 'burst into tears,' — so I have it on authority: — 
here was one possibility about to be strangled that made unex- 
pected noise ! Sterling's interview ended in the offer of his hand, 
and the acceptance of it ; — any sacrifice to get rid of this horrid 
Spanish business, and save the health and life of a gifted young 
man so precious to the world and to another ! 

'Ill-health,' as often afterwards in Sterling's life, when the ex- 
cuse was real enough but not the chief excuse; 'ill-health, and 
insuperable obstacles and engagements,' had to bear the chief 
brunt in apologising: and, as Sterling's actual presence, or that 
of any Englishman except Boyd and his money, was not in the 
least vital to the adventure, his excuse was at once accepted. 
The English connexions and subscriptions are a given fact, to 
be presided over by what English volunteers there are: and as 
for Englishmen, the fewer Englishmen that go, the larger will 
be the share of influence for each. The other adventurers, 
Torrijos among them in due readiness, moved silently one by 
one down to Deal: Sterling, superintending the naval hands, 
on board their ship in the Thames, was to see the last finish 
given to everything in that department; then, on the set even- 
ing, to drop down quietly to Deal, and there ssij Andad con Dios, 
and return. 

Behold ! Just before the set evening came, the Spanish Envoy 
at this Court has got notice of what is going on ; the Spanish Envoy, 
and of course the British Foreign Secretary, and of course also the 
Thames Police. Armed men spring suddenly on board, one day, 
while SterHng is there ; declare the ship seized and embargoed in 
the King's name ; nobody on board to stir till he has given some 
account of himself in due time and place ! Huge consternation, 
naturally, from stem to stern. SterHng, whose presence of mind 



3i8 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 

seldom forsook him, casts his eye over the River and its craft ; sees 
a wherry, privately signals it, drops rapidly on board of it : ' ' Stop ! ' ' 
fiercely interjects the marine poHceman from the ship's deck. — 
"Why stop ? What use have you for me, or I for you ? " and the 
oars begin playing. — ''Stop, or I'll shoot you ! " cries the marine 
poHceman, drawing a pistol. — ''No, you won't." — "I will !" — ■ 
"If you do you'll be hanged at the next Maidstone assizes, then; 
that's all," — and Sterling's wherry shot rapidly ashore; and out 
of this perilous adventure. 

That same night he posted down to Deal; disclosed to the 
Torrijos party what catastrophe had come. No passage Spain- 
ward from the Thames ; well if arrestment do not suddenly come 
from the Thames ! It was on this occasion, I suppose, that the 
passage in the open boat to St. Valery occurred; — speedy flight 
in what boat or boats, open or shut, could be got at Deal on the 
sudden. Sterling himself, according to Hare's authority, actually 
went with them so far. Enough, they got shipping, as private 
passengers in one craft or the other; and, by degrees or at once, 
arrived all at Gibraltar, — Boyd, one or two young democrats of 
Regent Street, the fifty picked Spaniards, and Torrijos, — safe, 
though without arms ; still in the early part of the year. 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 

OLIVER GOLDSMITH 

[From The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century, 1853. Smith, 
Elder & Co. London, 1869. 

"The lectures ['The English Humourists'] soon became popular, as they 
deserved to be. Thackeray was not given to minute research, and his facts 
and dates require some correction. But his delicate appreciation of the 
congenial writers and the finish of his style give the lectures a permanent place 
in criticism. His 'light-in-hand manner,' as Motley remarked of a later 
course, 'suits well the delicate hovering rather than superficial style of his 
composition.'" — Sir Leslie Stephen, "Thackeray," Dictionary oj Na- 
tional Biography, Vol. LVI, p. 99. 

"We think there was no disappointment with his lectures. Those who 
knew his books found the author in the lecturer. Those who did not know 
his books were charmed in the lecturer by what is charming in the author — 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 319 

the unaffected humanity, the tenderness, the sweetness, the genial play of 
fancy, and the sad touch of truth, with that glancing stroke of satire which, 
lightning-hke, illumines while it withers. The lectures were even more 
delightful than the books, because the tone of the voice and the appearance 
of the man, the general personal magnetism, explained and alleviated so 
much that would otherwise have seemed doubtful or unfair. For those who 
had long felt in the writings of Thackeray a reality quite inexpressible, 
there was a secret delight in finding it justified in his speaking; for he speaks 
as he writes — simply, directly, without flourish, without any cant of oratory, 
commending what he says by its intrinsic sense, and the sympathetic and 
humane way in which it was spoken." — George William Curtis, 
"Thackeray in America," 1853. Literary and Social Essays, '^. 12,0. Harper 
& Brothers, New York, 1895.] 



" Jete sur cette boule, 
Laid, chetif et souffrant; 
Etouffe dans la foule, 
Faute d'etre assez grand: 

Une plainte touchante 

De ma bouche sortit. 

Le bon Dieu me dit: Chante, 

Chante, pauvre petit! 

Chanter ou je m'abuse, 
Est ma tache ici-bas. 
Tous ceux qu'ainsi j 'amuse 
Ne m'aimeront-ils pas?" 

In those charming lines of Beranger one may fancy described 
the career, the sufferings, the 'genius, the gentle nature of Gold- 
smith, and the esteem in which we hold him. Who, of the milHons 
whom he has amused, doesn't love him ? To be the most beloved 
of Enghsh writers, what a title that is for a man ! A wild youth, 
wayward but full of tenderness and affection, quits the country 
village where his boyhood has been passed in happy musing, in 
idle shelter, in fond longing to see the great world out of doors, 
and achieve name and fortune: and after years of dire struggle 
and neglect and poverty, his heart turning back as fondly to his 
native place as it had longed eagerly for change when sheltered 
there, he writes a book and a poem, full of the recollections and 
feehngs of home; he paints the friends and scenes of his youth, 
and peoples Auburn and Wakefield with remembrances of Lissoy. 
Wander he must, but he carries away a home-relic with him and 



320 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 

dies with it on his breast. His nature is truant ; in repose it longs 
for change : as on the journey it looks back for friends and quiet. 
He passes to-day in building an air-castle for to-morrow or in 
writing yesterday's elegy ; and he would fly away this hour but that 
a cage and necessity keep him. What is the charm of his verse, of 
his style, and humor ? His sweet regrets, his delicate compassion, 
his soft smile, his tremulous sympathy, the weakness which he 
owns ? Your love for him is half pity. You come hot and tired 
from the day's battle, and this sweet minstrel sings to you. Who 
could harm the kind vagrant harper ? Whom did he ever hurt ? 
He carries no weapon — save the harp on which he plays to you, 
and with which he delights great and humble, young and old, the 
captains in the tents, or the soldiers round the fire, or the women 
and children in the villages, at whose porches he stops and sings 
his simple songs of love and beauty. With that sweet story of 
The Vicar of Wakefield he has found entry into every castle and 
every hamlet in Europe. Not one of us, however busy or hard, 
but once or twice in our lives has passed an evening with him and 
undergone the charm of his delightful music. 

Goldsmith's father was no doubt the good Doctor Primrose, 
whom we all of us know. Swift was yet alive when the little 
Oliver was born at Pallas, or Pallasmore, in the county of Long- 
ford, in Ireland. In 1730, two years after the child's birth, 
Charles Goldsmith removed his family to Lissoy, in the county 
Westmeath, that sweet ''Auburn" which every person who hears 
me has seen in fancy. Here the kind parson brought up his eight 
children; and loving all the world, as his son says, fancied all 
the world loved him. He had a crowd of poor dependants besides 
those hungry children. He kept an open table, round which sat 
flatterers and poor friends, who laughed at the honest rector's 
many jokes and ate the produce of his seventy acres of farm. 
Those who have seen an Irish house in the present day can fancy 
that one of Lissoy. The old beggar still has his allotted corner by 
the kitchen turf; the maimed old soldier still gets his potatoes 
and buttermilk ; the poor cottier still asks his Honor's charity, and 
prays God bless his Reverence for the sixpence ; the ragged pen- 
sioner still takes his place by right and sufferance. There's still 
a crowd in the kitchen, and a crowd round the parlor table ; pro- 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 



321 



fusion, confusion, kindness, poverty. If an Irishman comes to 
London to make his fortune, he has a half-dozen of Irish depend- 
ants who take a percentage of his earnings. The good Charles 
Goldsmith left but little provision for his hungry race when death 
summoned him; and one of his daughters being engaged to a 
squire of rather superior dignity, Charles Goldsmith impoverished 
the rest of his family to provide the girl with a dowry. 

The small-pox, which scourged all Europe at that time, and 
ravaged the roses off the checks of half the world, fell foul of 
poor little Oliver's face, when the child was eight years old, and 
left him scarred and disfigured for his life. An old woman in his 
father's village taught him his letters, and pronounced him a dunce : 
Paddy Byrne, the hedge-schoolmaster, took him in- hand : and from 
Paddy Byrne he was transmitted to a clergyman at Elphin. When 
a child was sent to school in those days, the classic phrase was that 
he was placed under Mr. So-and-So's/er^^/e. Poor little ancestors ! 
It is hard to think how ruthlessly you were birched,, and how 
much of needless whipping and tears our small forefathers had to 
undergo ! A relative, kind Uncle Contarine, took the main 
charge of little Noll, who went through his school-days righteously 
doing as little work as he could : robbing orchards, playing at ball, 
and making his pocket-money fly about whenever fortune sent it 
to him. Everybody knows the story of that famous "Mistake of a 
Night," when the young schoolboy, provided with a guinea and a 
nag, rode up to the ''best house" in Ardagh, called for the land- 
lord's company over a bottle of wine at supper, and for a hot cake 
for breakfast in the morning; and found, when he asked for the 
bill, that the best house was Squire Featherstone's, and not the inn 
for which he mistook it. Who does not know every story about 
Goldsmith? That is a delightful and fantastic picture of the 
child dancing and capering about in the kitchen at home, when the 
old fiddler gibed at him for his ugliness and called him ^Esop ; and 
little Noll made his repartee of "Heralds proclaim aloud this 
saying — See ^sop dancing and his monkey playing." One can 
fancy a queer, pitiful look of humor and appeal upon that little 
scarred face — the funny little dancing figure, the funny little 
brogue. In his life, and his writings, which are the honest expres- 
sion of it, he is constantly bewailing that homely face and person ; 



322 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 



anon he surveys them in the glass ruefully ; and presently assumes 
the most comical dignity. He likes to deck out his little person 
in splendor and fine colors. He presented himself to be examined 
for ordination in a pair of scarlet breeches; and said honestly 
that he did not like to go into the Church, because he was fond of 
colored clothes. When he tried to practise as a doctor, he got by 
hook or by crook a black velvet suit, and looked as big and grand 
as he could, and kept his hat over a patch on the old coat : in better 
days he bloomed out in plum-color, in blue silk, and in new velvet. 
For some of those splendors the heirs and assignees of Mr. Filby, 
the tailor, have never been paid to this day: perhaps the kind 
tailor and his creditor have met and settled their little account 
in Hades. 

They showed until lately a window at Trinity College, Dublin, 
on which the name of "O. Goldsmith" was engraved with a dia- 
mond. Whose diamond was it ? Not the young sizar's, who made 
but a poor figure in that place of learning. He was idle, penniless, 
and fond of pleasure: he learned his way early to the pawn- 
broker's shop. He wrote ballads, they say, for the street-singers, 
who paid him a crown for a poem; and his pleasure was to steal 
out at night and hear his verses sung. He was chastised by his 
tutor for giving a dance in his rooms, and took the box on the ear 
so much to heart that he packed up his all, pawned his books and 
little property, and disappeared from college and family. He said 
he intended to go to America ; but when his money was spent, the 
young prodigal came home ruefully, and the good folks there 
killed their calf — it was but a lean one — and welcomed him 
back. 

After college, he hung about his mother's house, and lived 
for some years the life of a buckeen — passed a month with this 
relation and that, a year with one patron, a great deal of time 
at the public-house. Tired of this life, it was resolved that he 
should go to London and study at the Temple ; but he got no far- 
ther on the road to London and the woolsack than Dublin, where 
he gambled away the fifty pounds given to him for his outfit, and 
whence he returned to the indefatigable forgiveness of home. 
Then he determined to be a doctor, and Uncle Contarine helped 
him to a couple of years at Edinburgh. Then from Edinburgh 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 



323 



he felt that he ought to hear the famous professors of Leyden and 
Paris, and wrote most amusing pompous letters to his uncle about 
the great Farheim, Du Petit, and Duhamel du Monceau, whose 
lectures he proposed to follow. If Uncle Contarine believed those 
letters ; if Oliver's mother believed that story which the youth re- 
lated of his going to Cork, with the purpose of embarking for Amer- 
ica, of his having paid his passage-money and having sent his kit 
on board; of the anonymous captain sailing away with Oliver's 
valuable luggage in a nameless ship, never to return — if Uncle 
Contarine and the mother at Ballymahon believed his stories, they 
must have been a very simple pair, as it was a very simple rogue 
indeed who cheated them. When the lad, after failing in his 
clerical examination, after failing in his plan for studying the law, 
took leave of these projects and of his parents, and set out for Edin- 
burgh, he saw mother and uncle and lazy Ballymahon and green 
native turf and sparkling river for the last time. He was never to 
look on old Ireland more, and only in fancy revisit her. 

"But me, not destined such delights to share, 
My prime of Hfe in wandering spent and care; 
Impelled, with steps unceasing, to pursue 
Some fleeting good that mocks me with the view; 
That, like the circle bounding earth and skies. 
Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies; 
My fortune leads to traverse realms alone, 
And find no spot of all the world my own." 

I spoke in a former lecture of that high courage which enabled 
Fielding, in spite of disease, remorse, and poverty, always to retain 
a cheerful spirit, and to keep his manly benevolence and love 
of truth intact, as if these treasures had been confided to him 
for the public benefit, and he was accountable to posterity for 
their honorable employ; and a constancy equally happy and 
admirable, I think, was shown by Goldsmith, whose sweet and 
friendly nature bloomed kindly always in the midst of a life's 
storm and rain and bitter weather. The poor fellow was never 
so friendless but he could befriend some one, never so pinched 
and wretched but he could give of his crust and speak his word 
of compassion. If he had but his flute left, he could give that, 
and make the children happy in the dreary London court. He 



324 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 

could give the coals in that queer coal-scuttle we read of to his 
poor neighbor; he could give away his blankets in college to the 
poor widow, and warm himself as he best might in the feathers; 
he could pawn his coat to save his landlord from jail; when he 
was a school-usher, he spent his earnings in treats for the boys, 
and the good-natured schoolmaster's wife said justly that she 
ought to keep Mr. Goldsmith's money as well as the young gentle- 
men's. When he met his pupils in later life, nothing would 
satisfy the Doctor but he must treat them still. ''Have you seen 
the print of me after Sir Joshua Reynolds ?" he asked of one of 
his old pupils. "Not seen it ? not bought it ? Sure, Jack, if 
your picture had been published, I'd not have been without it 
half-an-hour." His purse and his heart were everybody's, and 
his friends' as much as his own. When he was at the height of 
his reputation, and the Earl of Northumberland, going as Lord 
Lieutenant to Ireland, asked if he could be of any service to 
Doctor Goldsmith, Goldsmith recommended his brother, and not 
himself, to the great man. ''My patrons," he gallantly said, 
"are the booksellers, and I want no others." Hard patrons they 
were, and hard work he did; but he did not complain much: 
if in his early writings some bitter words escaped him, some 
allusions to neglect and poverty, he withdrew these expressions 
when his works were republished and bette- days seemed to open 
for him; and he did not care to complain that printer or pub- 
lisher had overlooked his merit or left him poor. The Court 
face was turned from honest Oliver — the Court patronised 
Beattie; the fashion did not shine on him — fashion adored 
Sterne. Fashion pronounced Kelly to be the great writer of 
comedy of his day. A little — not ill-humor, but plaintiveness — 
a little betrayal of wounded pride which he showed, render him 
not the less amiable. The author of The Vicar of Wakefield 
had a right to protest when Newbery kept back the manuscript 
for tw^o years; had a right to be a little peevish with Sterne; a 
little angry when Coleman's actors declined their parts in his 
delightful comedy, when the manager refused to have a scene 
painted for it, and pronounced its damnation before hearing. 
He had not the great public with him; but he had the noble 
Johnson and the admirable Reynolds and the great Gibbon and 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 325 

the great Burke and the great Fox — friends and admirers illus- 
trious indeed; as famous as those who, fifty years before, sat 
round Pope's table. 

Nobody knows, and I dare say Goldsmith's buoyant temper 
kept no account of, all the pains which he endured during the 
early period of his literary career. Should any man of letters 
in our day have to bear up against such, Heaven grant he may 
come out of the period of misfortune with such a pure, kind heart 
as that which Goldsmith obstinately bore in his breast. The 
insults to which he had to submit are shocking to read of — 
slander, contumely, vulgar satire, brutal malignity perverting 
his commonest motives and actions; he had his share of these, 
and one's anger is roused at reading of them, as it is at seeing a 
woman insulted or a child assaulted, at the notion that a creature 
so very gentle and weak and full of love should have had to suffer 
so. And he had worse than insult to undergo — to own to fault 
and deprecate the anger of ruflSans. There is a letter of his 
extant to one Griffiths, a bookseller, in which poor Goldsmith is 
forced to confess that certain books sent by Griffiths are in the 
hands of a friend from whom Goldsmith had been forced to borrow 
money. "He was wild, sir," Johnson said, speaking of Gold- 
smith to Boswell with his great, wise benevolence and noble mer- 
cifulness of heart, "Dr. Goldsmith was wild, sir; but he is so no 
more." Ah ! if we pity the good and weak man who suffers 
undeservedly, let us deal very gently with him from whom misery 
extorts not only tears but shame; let us think humbly and chari- 
tably of the human nature that suffers so sadly and falls so low. 
Whose turn may it be to-morrow ? What weak heart, confident 
before trial, may not succumb under temptation invincible ? 
Cover the good man who has been vanquished — cover his face 
and pass on. 

For the last half-dozen years of his life. Goldsmith was far 
removed from the pressure of any ignoble necessity, and in the 
receipt, indeed, of a pretty large income from the booksellers, 
his patrons. Had he lived but a few years more, his public fame 
would have been as great as his private reputation, and he might 
have enjoyed alive a part of that esteem which his country has 
ever since paid to the vivid and versatile genius who has touched 



326 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 

on almost every subject of literature, and touched nothing that he 
did not adorn. Except in rare instances, a man is known in our 
profession and esteemed as a skilful workman, years before the 
lucky hit which trebles his usual gains and stamps him a popular 
author. In the strength of his age and the dawn of his reputation, 
having for backers and friends the most illustrious literary men 
of his time, fame and prosperity might have been in store for 
Goldsmith, had fate so willed it, and, at forty-six had not sudden 
disease carried him off. I say prosperity rather than competence 
for it is probable that no sum could have put order into his affairs 
or sufficed for his irreclaimable habits of dissipation. It must 
be remembered that he owed £2000 when he died. "Was ever 
poet," Johnson asked, " so trusted before ?" As has been 
the case with many another good fellow of his nation, his life 
was tracked and his substance wasted by crowds of hungry beggars 
and lazy dependants. If they came at a lucky time (and be sure 
they knew his affairs better than he did himself, and watched 
his pay-day), he gave them of his money : if they begged on empty- 
purse days, he gave them his promissory bills; or he treated 
them to a tavern where he had credit; or he obliged them with 
an order upon honest Mr. Filby for coats, for which he paid as 
long as he could earn and until the shears of Filby were to cut 
for him no more. Staggering under a load of debt and labor; 
tracked by bailiffs and reproachful creditors; running from a 
hundred poor dependants, whose appealing looks were perhaps 
the hardest of all pains for him to bear; devising fevered plans 
for the morrow, new histories, new comedies, all sorts of new 
literary schemes; flying from all these into seclusion, and out of 
seclusion into pleasure — at last, at five-and-forty, death seized 
him and closed his career. I have been many times in the cham- 
bers in the Temple which were his, and passed up the staircase 
which Johnson and Burke and Reynolds trod to see their friend, 
their poet, their kind Goldsmith — the stair on which the poor 
women sat weeping bitterly when they heard that the greatest 
and most generous of all men was dead within the black oak door. 
Ah, it was a different lot from that for which the poor fellow sighed 
when he wrote, with heart yearning for home, those most charm- 
ing of all fond verses, in which he fancies he revisits Auburn : — 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 327 

"Here as I take my solitary rounds, 
Amidst thy tangling walks and ruined grounds, 
And, many a year elapsed, return to view 
Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew, 
Remembrance wakes, with all her busy train, 
Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain. 
In all my wanderings round this world of care, 
In all my griefs — and God has given my share — 
I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown, 
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down; 
To husband out life's taper at the close, 
And keep the flame from wasting by repose: 
I still had hopes — for pride attends us still — 
Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill, 
Around my fire an evening group to draw. 
And tell of all I felt and all I saw; 
And as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue 
Pants to the place from whence at first he flew — 
I still had hopes, my long vexations past, 
Here to return, and die at home at last. 
O blest retirement, friend to life's decUne, 
Retreats from care that never must be mine. 
How blest is he who crowns, in shades like these, 
A youth of labor with an age of ease; 
Who quits a world where strong temptations try, 
And, since 'tis hard to combat, learns' to fly ! 
For him no wretches born to work and weep 
Explore the mine or tempt the dangerous deep; 
Nor surly porter stands in guilty state 
To spurn imploring famine from the gate : 
But on he moves to meet his latter end. 
Angels around befriending virtue's friend; 
Sinks to the grave with unperceived decay. 
Whilst resignation gently slopes the way; 
And, all his prospects brightening to the last. 
His heaven commences ere the world be past." 

In these verses, I need not say with what melody, with what 
touching truth, with what exquisite beauty of comparison — as 
indeed in hundreds more pages of the writings of this honest 
soul — the whole character of the man is told — his humble con- 
fession of faults and weakness; his pleasant little vanity, and 
desire that his village should admire him; his simple scheme of 
good in which everybody was to be happy — no beggar was to 
be refused his dinner — nobody in fact was to work much, and 
he to be the harmless chief of the Utopia, and the monarch of 
the Irish Yvetot. He would have told again, and without fear 
of their failing, those famous jokes which had hung fire in 



328 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 

London; he would have talked of his great friends of the 
Club — of my Lord Clare and my Lord Bishop, my Lord 
Nugent — sure he knew them intimately, and was hand and 
glove with some of the best men in town — and he would have 
spoken of Johnson and of Burke, and of Sir Joshua, who had 
painted him — and he would have told wonderful sly stories of 
Ranelagh and the Pantheon, and the masquerades at Madame 
Cornelys; and he would have toasted, with a sigh, the Jessamy 
Bride — the lovely Mary Horneck. 

The figure of that charming young lady forms one of the 
prettiest recollections of Goldsmith's life. She and her beautiful 
sister, who married Bunbury, the graceful and humorous amateur 
artist of those days, when Gilray had but just begun to try his 
powers, were among the kindest and dearest of Goldsmith's 
many friends ; cheered and pitied him, travelled abroad with him, 
made him welcome at their home, and gave him many a pleasant 
holiday. He bought his finest clothes to figure at their country- 
house at Barton — he wrote them droll verses. They loved him, 
laughed at him, played him tricks, and made him happy. He 
asked for a loan from Garrick, and Garrick kindly supplied him, 
to enable him to go to Barton: but there were to be no more holi- 
days and only one brief struggle more for poor Goldsmith. A lock 
of his hair was taken from the coffin and given to the Jessamy Bride. 
She lived quite into our time. Hazlitt saw her, an old lady but 
beautiful still, in Northcote's painting-room, who told the eager 
critic how proud she always was that Goldsmith had admired her. 

The younger Coleman has left a touching reminiscence of him : 
*'I was only five years old," he says, ''when Goldsmith took me on 
his knee one evening whilst he was drinking coffee with my father, 
and began to play with me, which amiable act I returned, with 
the ingratitude of a peevish brat, by giving him a very smart slap 
on the face : it must have been a tingler, for it left the marks of my 
spiteful paw on his cheek. This infantile outrage was followed 
by summary justice, and I was locked up by my indignant father 
in an adjoining room to undergo solitary imprisonment in the dark. 
Here I began to howl and scream most abominably, which was no 
bad step towards my Hberation, since those who were not inclined 
to pity me might be Hkely to set me free for abating a nuisance. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 



329 



At length a generous friend appeared to extricate me from jeop- 
ardy, and that generous friend was no other than the man I had so 
wantonly molested by assault and battery — it was the tender-hearted 
Doctor himself, with a Hghted candle in his hand, and a smile upon 
his countenance, which was still partially red from the effects of 
my petulance. I sulked and sobbed as he fondled and soothed, 
till I began to brighten. Goldsmith seized the propitious moment 
of returning good-humour, when he put down the candle and began 
to conjure. He placed three hats, which happened to be in the 
room, and a shilling under each. The shilHngs he told me were 
England, France, and Spain. 'Hey presto cockalorum ! ' cried 
the Doctor, and lo, on uncovering the shilHngs, which had been 
dispersed each beneath a separate hat, they were all found con- 
gregated under one. I was no politician at five years old, and 
therefore might not have wondered at the sudden revolution which 
brought England, France, and Spain all under one crown; but as 
also I was no conjuror, it amazed me beyond measure. . . . From 
that time, whenever the Doctor came to visit my father, ' I plucked 
his gown to share the good man's smile' ; a game at romps constantly 
ensued, and we were always cordial friends and merry playfellows. 
Our unequal companionship varied somewhat as to sports as I 
grew older ; but it did not last long : my senior playmate died in 
his forty-fifth year, when I had attained my eleventh. ... In all 
the numerous accounts of his virtues and foibles, his genius and 
absurdities, his knowledge of nature and ignorance of the world, his 
' compassion for another's woe ' was always predominant ; and my 
trivial story of his humoring a froward child weighs but as a feather 
in the recorded scale of his benevolence." 

Think of him reckless, thriftless, vain, if you like — but merciful, 
gentle, generous, full of love and pity. He passes out of our life, 
and goes to render his account beyond it. Think of the poor 
pensioners weeping at his grave; think of the noble spirits that 
admired and deplored him ; think of the righteous pen that wrote 
his epitaph — and of the wonderful and unanimous response 
of affection with which the world has paid back the love he gave 
it. His humor dehghting us still, his song fresh and beautiful as 
when first he charmed with it, his words in all our mouths, his 
very weaknesses beloved and familiar — his benevolent spirit 



33<^ 



SIDNEY LEE 



seems still to smile upon us, to do gentle kindnesses, to succor 
with sweet charity, to soothe, caress, and forgive, to plead with the 
fortunate for the unhappy and the poor. 



THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH 

SIDNEY LEE 
[From the Dictionary of National Biography.] 

Ralegh, Sir Walter (i552?-i6i8), military and naval com- 
mander and author, was born about 1552 at Hayes or Hayes Bar- 
ton, near Budleigh Salterton, South Devonshire (for description 
of birthplace see Trans, of Devonshire Association, xxi. 312-20). 
His father, Walter Ralegh (i496?-i58i), a country gentleman, 
was originally settled at Fardell, near Plymouth, where he owned 
property at his death; he removed about 1520 to Hayes, where he 
leased an estate, and spent the last years of his long life at Exeter. 
He narrowly escaped death in the western rebellion of 1549, 
was church-warden of East Budleigh in 1561, and is perhaps the 
'Walter Rawley' who represented Wareham in the parliament 
of 1558. He was buried in the church of St. Mary Major, Exeter, 
on 23 Feb. 1 580-1. He married thrice: first, about 15 18, 
Joan, daughter of John Drake of Exmouth, and probably first 
cousin of Sir Francis Drake; secondly, a daughter of Darrell of 
London; and, thirdly, after 1548, Katharine, daughter of Sir 
Philip Champernowne of Modbury, and widow of Otho Gilbert 
{d. 18 Feb. 1547) of Compton, near Dartmouth. 

By his first wife the elder Ralegh had two sons: George, who 
is said to have furnished a ship to meet the Spanish armada in 
1588, and was buried at Withycombe Ralegh on 12 March 1596-7, 
leaving issue believed to be illegitimate ; and John, who succeeded 
to the family property at Fardell, and died at a great age in 1629. 
Mary, the only child of the second marriage, was wife of Hugh 
Snedale. By his third wife, Katharine {d. 1594), whose will, dated 
II May 1594, is in the probate registry at Exeter, the elder Ralegh 
had, together with a daughter Margaret and Walter, the subject 
of this notice, 



THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH 331 

Sir Carew Ralegh (i55o?-i625?), Sir Walter's elder brother 
of the whole blood. Carew engaged in 1578 in the expedition of 
his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert [q. v.]/ and figured with 
Sir Walter and his two elder half-brothers, George and John, on 
the list of sea-captains drawn up in consequence of rumours of a 
Spanish invasion in January 1585-6. He sat in parliament as 
member for Wiltshire in 1586, for Ludgershall in 1589, for Down- 
ton both in 1603-4 and in 1621, and he was knighted by Queen 
Elizabeth in 1601 at Basing House. For some time he was gentle- 
man of the horse to John Thynne of Longleat, and on Thynne's 
death he married his widow, Dorothy, daughter of Sir William 
Wroughton of Broad Heigh ton, Wiltshire. On his marriage he 
sold his property in Devonshire, and settled at Downton House, 
near Salisbury. Until 1625 he was lieutenant of the Isle of Port- 
land (cf. Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1608-25). Aubrey says of him 
that he ' had a delicate clear voice, and played skilfully on the 
olpharion' {Letters, ii. 510). His second son, Walter (i 586-1646), 
is separately noticed. 

Through his father and mother, who are both credited by tra- 
dition with puritan predilections, Walter Ralegh was connected 
with many distinguished Devon and Cornish, families — the 
Courtenays, Grenvilles, St. Legers, Russells, Drakes, and Gilberts. 
Sir Humphrey Gilbert was his mother's son by her first husband. 
His early boyhood seems to have been spent at Hayes, and he may 
have been sent to school at Budleigh; Sidmouth and Ottery St. 
Mary have also been suggested as scenes of his education. It was 
doubtless by association with the sailors on the beach at Bud- 
leigh Salterton that he imbibed the almost instinctive understand- 
ing of the sea that characterises his writings. Sir John Millais, 
in his picture 'The Boyhood of Ralegh,' painted at Budleigh 
Salterton in 1870, represents him sitting on the seashore at the foot 
of a sunburnt sailor, who is narrating his adventures. He cer- 
tainly learnt to speak with the broadest of Devonshire accents, 
which he retained through life. From childhood he was, says 
Naunton, 'an indefatigable reader.' At the age of fourteen or 
fifteen he would seem to have gone to Oxford, where he was, 

1 The letters q. v. {quern vide) refer to other articles in the Dictionary of 
National Biography. 



332 SIDNEY LEE 

according to Wood, in residence for three years as a member of 
Oriel College. His name appears in the college books in 1572, but 
the dates and duration of his residence are uncertain. 

In 1569 Ralegh sought adventures in France as a volunteer in 
the Huguenot army. With it he was present in the battle of 
Jarnac (13 March), and again at Moncontour {Hist, of the World, 
V. ii. ^,^). It has been conjectured that on 24 Aug. 1572, the day 
of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, he was in Paris; it is more 
probable that he was in the south of France, where, according to his 
own testimony, he saw the catholics smoked out of the caves in 
the Languedoc hills {ih. iv. ii. 16). It is stated authoritatively that 
he remained in France for upwards of five years, but nothing fur- 
ther is known of his experiences there (Oldys, p. 21). In the 
spring of 1576 he was in London, and in a copy of congratulatory 
verses which he prefixed to the ^Steele Glas' of George Gas- 
coigne [q. v.], published in April 1576, he is described as 'of the 
Middle Temple.' It may be supposed that he was only 'a pass- 
ing lodger ; ' he has himself stated that he was not a law student 
(Works, i. 669). In December 1577 he appears to have had a 
residence at Islington, and been known as a hanger-on of the court 
(GossE, p. 6). . It is possible that in 1577 or 1578 he was in the 
Low Countries under Sir John Norris or Norreys [q. v.], and was 
present in the brilliant action of Rymenant on i Aug. 1578 (Oldys, 
p. 25) ; but the statement is conjectural. 

In April 1578 he was in England {Trans, of the Devonshire 
Association, xv. 174), and in September he was at Dartmouth, 
where he joined his half-brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert in fitting 
out a fleet of eleven ships for a so-called voyage of discovery. 
After tedious delays, only seven, three of which were very small, 
finally sailed on 19 Nov. That the 'voyage of discovery' was 
a mere pretence may be judged by the armament of the ships, 
which according to the standard of the age, was very heavy. 
Gilbert commanded the Admiral, of 250 tons; Carew, Ralegh's 
elder brother, commanded the Vice- Admiral ; Ralegh himself 
the Falcon of 100 tons, with the distinguishing motto, ' Nee mor- 
tem peto, nee finem fugio' (cf. State Papers, Dom. Elizabeth, 
cxxvi. 46, i. 49; cf. McDouGALL, Voyage of the Resohite, pp. 
520-6). It is probable that Gilbert went south to the Azores, 



THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH 



?>Z?> 



or even to the West Indies. After an indecisive engagement with 
some Spaniards, the expedition was back at Dartmouth in the 
spring of 1579 (Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, iii. 186). 

A few months later Ralegh was at the court, on terms of intimacy 
at once with the Earl of Leicester, and with Leicester's bitter 
enemy and Burghley's disreputable son-in-law, the Earl of Oxford. 
At Oxford's request he carried a challenge to Leicester's nephew, 
Sir Philip Sidney, which Sidney accepted, but Oxford refused to 
fight, and, it is said, proposed to have Sidney assassinated. Ra- 
legh's refusal to assist in this wicked business bred a coldness 
between him and Oxford, which deepened on the latter's part 
into deadly hatred (St. John, i. 48). But Ralegh's temper was 
hot enough to involve him in like broils on his own account. In 
February 1579-80 he was engaged in a quarrel with Sir Thomas 
Perrot, and on the 7 th the two were brought before the lords of 
the council 'for 'a fray made betwixt them,' and 'committed 
prisoners to the Fleet.' Six days later they were released on 
finding sureties for their keeping the peace {ih. i. 50), but on 17 
March Ralegh and one Wingfield were committed to the Mar- 
shalsea for 'a fray beside the tennis-court at Westminster' {Acts 
of Privy Council, xi. 421). 

Next June Ralegh sailed for Ireland as the captain of a company 
of one hundred soldiers. The friendship of Leicester, and, through 
Sidney, of Walsingham, brought him opportunities of personal 
distinction. In August he was joined in commission with Sir 
Warham St. Leger for the trial of James Fitzgerald, brother of 
the Earl of Desmond, who was sentenced and put to death as a 
traitor. Ralegh expressed the conviction that leniency to bloody- 
minded malefactors was cruelty to good and peaceable subjects 
{ih. i. 38). When, in November, the lord deputy. Grey, forced the 
Spanish and Italian adventurers, who had built and garrisoned the 
Fort del Oro at Smerwick, to surrender at discretion, Ralegh had 
no scruples about carrying out the lord deputy's order to put them 
to the sword, to the number of six hundred {ih. i. 40) [see Grey, 
Arthur, fourteenth Lord Grey de Wilton]. Although the 
exploit has the aspect of a cold-blooded butchery, it must be re- 
membered that the Spaniards were legally pirates, who had with- 
out valid commissions stirred up the native Irish to rebellion, and 



334 SIDNEY LEE 

that English adventurers in the same legal position on the Spanish 
main [cf. Oxenham, John], although they were free from the 
added imputation of inciting to rebellion, had been mercilessly 
slain. The only fault found by the queen was that the 
superior officers had been spared {Cal. State Papers, Ire- 
land, Ixxix. 13). Edmund Spenser [q. v.], who was pres- 
ent at Smerwick, approved of Grey's order and of Ralegh's 
obedience {View of the Present State of Ireland, Globe edit, 
p. 656), and Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador in London, ventured 
on no remonstrance (Froude, Hist, of England, Cabinet edit. x. 
582-91). 

During the campaign Spenser and Ralegh were necessarily 
brought together, but it does not appear that any intimacy then 
sprang up between them, and in January Ralegh was sent into 
garrison at Cork, where, except for an occasional journey to Dub- 
lin to confer with Grey or a dashing skirmish, he lay till the end of 
July. He was then appointed one of a temporary commission for 
the government of Munster, which established its headquarters 
at Lismore, and thence kept the whole province in hand. It was 
apparently in November that Ralegh, on his way from Lismore 
to Cork with eight horse and eighty foot, was attacked by a 
numerous body of Irish. They could not, however, stand before 
the disciplined strength of the English, and fled. Ralegh, hotly 
pursuing them with his small body of horse, got in among a crowd 
of the fugitives, who turned to bay, and fought fiercely, stabbing 
the horses with their knives. Ralegh's horse was killed, and 
Ralegh, entangled under the falling animal, owed delivery from 
imminent danger to the arrival of reinforcements. This marked 
the end, for the time, of Ralegh's Irish service. 

In the beginning of December 1581 he was sent to England with 
despatches from Colonel Zouch, the new governor of Munster, 
and, coming to the court, then at Greenwich, happened to attract 
the notice and catch the fancy of the queen. There is nothing 
improbable in the story of his spreading his new plush cloak over 
a muddy road for the queen to walk on. The evidence on which 
it is based (Fuller, Worthies) is shadowy; but the incident is in 
keeping with Ralegh's quick, decided resolution, and it is certain 
that Ralegh sprang with a sudden bound into the royal favour. 



THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH 335 

Fuller's other story of his writing on a window of the palace, 
with a diamond, 

Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall 

and of Elizabeth's replying to it with 

If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all, 

rests on equally weak testimony, and is inherently improbable. 
Naunton's story that Ralegh first won the queen's favour by the 
ability he showed in pleading his cause before the council has been 
satisfactorily disproved by Edwards (i. 49). It, in fact, appears 
that a handsome figure and face were his real credentials. He was 
under thirty, tall, well-built, of 'a good presence,' with thick dark 
hair, a bright complexion, and an expression full of life. His 
dress, too, was at all times magnificent, to the utmost limit of his 
purse; and, when called on to speak, he answered 'with a bold 
and plausible tongue, whereby he could set out his parts to the 
best advantage.' He had, moreover, the reputation of a bold and 
dashing partisan, ingenious and daring; fearless alike in the field 
and in the council-chamber, a man of a stout heart and a sound 
head. 

For several years Ralegh belonged to the court, the recipient 
of the queen's bounties and favour to an extent which gave much 
occasion for scandal. He was indeed consulted as to the affairs 
of Ireland, and Grey's rejection of his advice was a chief cause of 
Grey's recall; but such service, in itself a mark of the queen's 
confidence, does not account for the numerous appointments and 
grants which, within a few years, raised him from the position of 
a poor gentleman-adventurer to be one of the most wealthy of 
the courtiers. Among other patents and monopoHes, he was 
granted, in May 1583, that of wine hcenses, which brought him 
in from 800/. to 2,000/. a year, though it involved him in a dispute 
with the vice-chancellor of Cambridge, on whose jurisdiction his 
lessee had encroached. In 1584 he was knighted, and in 1585 
was appointed warden of the stannaries, that is of the mines of 
Cornwall and Devon, lord lieutenant of Cornwall, and vice-admiral 
of the two counties. Both in 1585 and 1586 he sat in parliament as 
member for Devonshire. In 1586, too, he obtained the grant of 



336 SIDNEY LEE 

a vast tract of land — some forty thousand acres in Cork, Water- 
ford, and Tipperary. The grant included Youghal, with manorial 
rights and the salmon fishery of the Blackwater, and Ralegh 
began building houses at both Youghal and Lismore. He was 
also appointed captain of the queen's guard, an office requiring 
immediate attendance on the queen's person. In 1587 he was 
granted estates in Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, and Nottinghamshire, 
forfeited by Babington and his fellow-conspirators. 

Ralegh, however, was ill-fitted to spend his life in luxury and 
court intrigue, of which, as the queen's favourite, he was the centre. 
His jurisdiction of the stannaries marked an era of reform, and 
the rules which he laid down continued long in force. As vice- 
admiral of the western counties, with his half-brother Sir John 
Gilbert as his deputy in Devon, he secured a profitable share in 
the privateering against Spain, which was conducted under cover 
of commissions from the Prince of Conde or from the Prince of 
Orange. In 1583 he had a large interest in the Newfoundland 
voyage of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, fitting out a vessel of two hundred 
tons, called the Bark Ralegh, which he had intended to command 
himself, till positively forbidden by his royal mistress. After Gil- 
bert's death he applied for a patent similar to that which Gilbert 
had held — to discover unknown lands, to take possession of them 
in the queen's name, and to hold them for six years. This was 
granted on 25 March 1584, and in April he sent out a preliminary 
expedition under Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlow, who, taking 
the southern route by the West Indies and the coast of Florida, made 
the land to the southward of Cape Hatteras. They then coasted 
northwards, entered the Oregon Inlet, and in the queen's name 
took possession of Wokoken, Roanoke, and the mainland adjacent. 
To this region, on their return in September, the queen herself 
gave the name of Virginia, then, and for many years afterwards, 
applied to the whole seaboard of the continent, from Florida to 
Newfoundland. 

Ralegh now put forward the idea, possibly conceived years before 
in intercourse with Coligny (Besant, Gaspard Coligny, chap, vii.), 
of establishing a colony in the newly discovered country ; and, as 
the queen would not allow him to go in person, the expedition 
sailed in April, 1585, under the command of his cousin, Sir Richard 



THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH 337 

Grenville or Greynvile [q. v.], with Ralph Lane [q. v.] as governor 
of the colony, and Thomas Harriot [q. v.], who described himself 
as Ralegh's servant, as surveyor. The rules for its government 
were drawn up by Ralegh ; but quarrels, in the first instance be- 
tween Lane and Grenville and afterwards between the English 
settlers and the natives, rendered the scheme abortive, and in June 
1586 the settlement was evacuated, the colonists being carried 
home by the fleet under Sir Francis Drake. Ralegh had mean- 
time sent Grenville out with reinforcements and supplies ; but, as 
he found the place deserted, he came back, leaving fifteen men on 
Roanoke. In the summer of 1587 another and larger expedition 
was sent out under the command of John White, who, when 
supplies ran short, came home, leaving eighty-nine men, seventeen 
women, and two children, including his own daughter and her 
child. Ralegh fitted out two ships in the following spring, but 
the captains converted the expedition into a privateering cruise, 
and, after being roughly handled by some Rochelle men-of-war, 
they came back to England. When, in 1589, a tardy relief was 
sent, the colonists had disappeared, nor was any trace of them ever 
recovered; and Ralegh, having spent upwards of 40,000/. in the 
attempt to found the colony, was compelled to abandon the project 
for the time. In after years he sent out other expeditions to Vir- 
ginia, the latest in 1603. On his downfall in that year his patent 
reverted to the crown. 

It is by his long, costly, and persistent effort to establish this 
first of English colonies that Ralegh's name is most favourably 
known ; and, though the effort ended in failure, to Ralegh belongs 
the credit of having, first of Englishmen, pointed out the way to 
the formation of a greater England beyond the seas. But he had 
no personal share in the actual expeditions, and he was never in 
his whole life near the coast of Virginia. Among the more immedi- 
ate results of his endeavours is popularly reckoned the introduction, 
about 1586, into England of potatoes and tobacco. The assertion 
is in part substantiated. His 'servant' Harriot, whom he sent 
out to America, gives in his 'Brief and True Report of Virginia,' 
(1588) a detailed account of the potato and tobacco, and describes 
the uses to which the natives put them; he himself made the experi- 
ment of smoking tobacco. The potato and tobacco were in 1596 



338 . SIDNEY LEE 

growing as rare plants in Lord Burghley's garden in the Strand 
(Gerard, Catalogus, 1596). In his 'Herbal' (1597, pp. 286-8, 
781) Gerard gives an illustration and description of each. 
Although potatoes had at a far earlier period been brought to 
Europe by the Spaniards, Harriot's specimens were doubtless the 
earliest to be planted in this kingdom. Some of them Ralegh 
planted in his garden at Youghal, and on that ground he may be 
regarded as one of Ireland's chief benefactors. This claim is 
supported by the statement made to the Royal Society in 1693 by 
Sir Robert Southwell [q. v.], then president, to the effect that his 
grandfather first cultivated the potato in Ireland from specimens 
given him by Ralegh (G. W. Johnson, Gardener, 1849, i. 8). 
The cultivation spread rapidly in Ireland, but was uncommon in 
England until the eighteenth century. The assertion that Sir 
John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake introduced the potato long 
before Ralegh initiated colonial enterprise appears to be erroneous. 
It seems that they brought over in 1565 some specimens of the 
sweet potato (convolvolus hattata), which only distantly resembles 
the common potato (Alphonse de Candolle, Origin of Culti- 
vated Plants, 1884; Clos, 'Quelques documents sur I'histoire 
de la pomme de terre,' in Journal Agric. du midi de la France, 
1874, 8vo). With regard to tobacco, the plant was cultivated in 
Portugal before 1560, and Lobel, in his 'Stirpium Adversaria 
Nova' (pp. 251-2), declares that it was known in England before 
1576. Drake and Hawkins seem to have first brought the leaf 
to England from America; but Ralegh (doubtless under the 
tuition of Harriot) was the first Englishman of rank to smoke it; 
he soon became confirmed in the habit, and taught his fellow- 
courtiers to follow his example, presenting to them pipes with 
bowls of silver. The practice spread with amazing rapidity 
among all classes of the nation (Camden, Annals, s.a. 1586; 
TiEDEMANN, GescMchte des Tabaks, 1854, pp. 148 sq. ; Fairholt, 
Tobacco, 1859, pp. 50-1; cf. Gerard, Herbal, 1597, p. 289). 

In March 1588, when the Spanish invasion appeared imminent, 
Ralegh was appointed one of a commission under the presidency 
of Sir Francis KnoUys, with Lord Grey, Sir John Norris, and others 
— all land officers, with the exception of Sir Francis Drake — to 
draw up a plan for the defence of the country (Western Antiquary, 



THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH 339 

vii. 276). The statement that it was by Ralegh's advice that the 
queen determined to fit out the fleet is unsupported by evidence 
(Stebbing, p. 65). The report of the commission seems to trust 
the defence of the country entirely to the land forces, possibly 
because its instruction referred only to their disposition. It no- 
where appears that Ralegh had any voice as to the naval prepara- 
tions. As the year advanced, he was sent into different parts of 
the country to hurry on the levies (Gosse, p. 38), especially in the 
west, where, as warden of the stannaries and lord lieutenant of 
Cornwall, it was his duty to embody the militia. 

It is stated in every 'Life' of Ralegh that when the contending 
fleets were coming up Channel, Ralegh was one of the volunteers 
who joined the lord admiral and took a more or less prominent 
part in the subsequent fighting. Of this there is no mention in the 
English state papers or in the authentic correspondence of the 
time. Nor can any reliance be placed on the report that Ralegh 
took part in the naval operations mentioned in the 'Copie of a 
Letter sent out of England to Don Bernardin Mendoza' (1588, 
and often reprinted) (cf. A Pack of Spanish Lies). This doubtful 
authority also credits Robert Cecil with having joined the fleet — 
a manifest misstatement (Defeat of the Spanish Armada, i. 342). 

In the early part of September Ralegh was in Cornwall ; after- 
wards in London, and about the 19th he crossed over to Ireland 
in company with Sir Richard Grenville {State Papers, Dom. 
ccxv. 64, ccxvi. 28, Ireland, 14 Sept.; Sir Thomas Heneage to 
Carew, 19 Sept., Carew MSS.). By December he was again at 
court, and came into conflict with the queen's new favourite Es- 
sex. The latter strove to drive Ralegh from court, and on some 
unknown pretext sent him a challenge, which the lords of the coun- 
cil prevented his accepting, wishing the whole business 'to be 
repressed and to be buried in silence that it may not be known 
to her Majesty' {State Papers, Dom. ccxix. ;^7,) [see Devereux, 
Robert, second Earl of Essex]. The statement that in the 
early summer of 1589 Ralegh took part in the expedition to Por- 
tugal under Drake and Norris (Oldys, p. 119) is virtually contra- 
dicted by the full and authoritative documents relating to the ex- 
pedition (cf. State Papers, Dom. ccxxii. 90, 97, 98, ccxxiii. 35, 55). 
In May 1589 Ralegh was in Ireland {ib. Ireland, cxliv. 27, 28), 



340 SIDNEY LEE 

and possibly continued there during the summer; he was cer- 
tainly there in August and September {Cal. Carew MSS. 5, 24 
Aug.). To this period may be referred his intimacy with Edmund 
Spenser [q. v.], who bestowed on him in his poems the picturesque 
appellation of 'The Shepherd of the Ocean.' Ralegh returned 
to court in October, and, taking Spenser with him, se- 
cured for the poet a warm welcome from the queen. Ralegh's 
stay at court was short. His departure was apparently due to 
some jealousy of Sir William Fitzwilliam, lord deputy of Ireland, 
a friend of Essex, with whom he had quarrelled in Ireland. On 
2^ Dec. he wrote to Carew, 'My retreat from the court was upon 
good cause. . . . When Sir William Fitzwilliam shall be in 
England, I take myself for his better by the honourable offices I 
hold, as also by that nearness to her Majesty which still I enjoy ' 
{Cal. Carew MSS.; cf. Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. iv. 3). 

Court intrigues, his duties in Cornwall, the equipment of the 
various privateers in which he had an interest, seem to have occu- 
pied him through 1590. In the beginning of 159 1 he was appointed 
to command in the second post, under Lord Thomas Howard, a 
strong squadron of queen's ships and others, to look out for the 
Spanish plate fleet from the West Indies. Ultimately, however, 
the queen refused to let him go, and his place afloat was taken by 
his cousin. Sir Richard Grenville, whose death he celebrated in 
'A Report of the Truth of the Fight about the Isles of the Azores 
this last Sommer, betwixt the Revenge, one of her Majesties 
Shippes, and an Armada of the King of Spaine.' This, published 
anonymously in the autumn of 1591, was afterwards acknow 
ledged in Hakluyt's 'Principal Navigations,' and forms the basis 
of a contemporary ballad by Gervase Markham [q. v.] and of 
Tennyson's well-known poem. 

In the following year (1592) a still stronger squadron was fitted 
out, mainly at the cost of Ralegh, who ventured all the money he 
could raise, amounting to about 34,000/. ; the Earl of Cumberland 
also contributed largely, and the queen supplied two thips, the 
Foresight and Garland. It was intended that Ralegh should 
command it in person, though the queen had expressed herself 
opposed to the plan, and as early as 10 March he wrote to Cecil, 
' I have promised her Majesty that, if I can persuade the com- 



THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH 341 

panics to follow Sir Martin Frobiser, I will without fail return, and 
bring them but into the sea some fifty or three-score leagues ; which 
to do, her Majesty many times, with great grace, bade me re- 
member ' (Edwards, ii. 45). But in the early days of May, as 
the fleet put to sea, Ralegh received an order to resign the com- 
mand to Frobiser and return immediately. He conceived himself 
warranted in going as far as Cape Finisterre. There dividing 
the fleet, he sent one part, under Frobiser, to threaten the coast of 
Portugal so as to prevent the Spanish fleet putting to sea; the other, 
under Sir John Burgh, to the Azores, where it captured the Madre 
de Dios, the great carrack, homeward bound from the East Indies 
with a cargo of the estimated value of upwards of half a million 
sterling. By the beginning of June Ralegh had arrived in London, 
and although on 8 June he was staying at his own residence, 
Durham House in the Strand, the ancient London house of the 
bishops of Durham, which he had held since 1584 on a grant from 
the crown {ih.ii. 252 seq.), he was in July committed to the Tower. 
His recall and imprisonment were due to the queen's wrath on 
discovering that the man whom she had delighted to honour and 
enrich, who had been professing a lover's devotion to her, had been 
carrying on an intrigue with one of her maids of honour, Elizabeth, 
daughter of Sir Nicholas Throgmorton. In March there had 
been circulated a rumour that Ralegh had married the lady, but 
this, in a letter to Robert Cecil on 10 March 1592, Ralegh had 
denounced as a 'malicious report.' According to Camden, 
Ralegh seduced the lady some months before, an assertion which 
J. P. Collier needlessly attempted to corroborate by printing a 
forged news-letter on the topic (Archceologia, xxxiv. 160-70). 
The queen showed no more mercy to Mistress Throgmorton than 
to her lover, and she also was imprisoned in the Tower. In a 
letter addressed to Sir Robert Cecil in July Ralegh affected frenzied 
grief and rage at being debarred from the presence of the queen, 
whose personal attractions he eulogised in language of absurd 
extravagance (Edwards, ii. 51-2). In his familiar poem 'As 
you came from the Holy Land,' he seems to have converted into 
verse much of the flattering description of Elizabeth which figured 
in this letter to Cecil {Poems, ed. Hannah, pp. 80-1). But, 
despite these blandishments, he continued a close prisoner till the 



342 SIDNEY. LEE 

middle of September, when, on the arrival of the great carrack, 
the Madre de Dios, at Dartmouth, he was sent thither with Cecil 
and Drake, in the hope that by his local influence he might be able 
to stop the irregular pillage of the prize. He arrived in charge of 
a Mr. Blunt {State Papers, Dom. ccxliii. 17), perhaps Sir Chris- 
topher Blount [q. v.], the stepfather and friend of the Earl of 
Essex. On going on board the carrack his friends and the mariners 
congratulated him on being at liberty, but he answered 'No, I 
am the Queen of England's poor captive.' Cecil, his fellow- 
commissioner, treated him respectfully. 'I do grace him,' 
wrote Cecil, ' as much I may, for I find him marvellous greedy to 
do anything to recover the conceit of his brutish offence' (ih.). By 
27 Sept. the commissioners had reduced the affairs of the carrack 
to something like order (Edwards, ii. 73), and eventually the net 
proceeds of the prize amounted to about 150,000/., of which the 
queen took the greatest part. Ralegh considered himself ill-used 
in receiving 36,000/., being only 2,000/. more than he had ventured, 
while the Earl of Cumberland, who had ventured only 19,000/., 
also received 36,000/. {ib. ii. 76-8). But her majesty, gratified, 
it may be, by her share of the booty, so far relented as to restore 
Ralegh his liberty. 

It is probable that Ralegh and Elizabeth Throgmorton were 
married immediately afterwards. Being forbidden to come to 
court, they settled at Sherborne, where in January 1591-92 
Ralegh had obtained a ninety-nine years' lease of the castle and 
park (ib. i. 463). He now busied himself with building and plant- 
ing, 'repairing the castle, erecting a magnificent mansion close at 
hand, and laying out the grounds with the greatest refinement of 
taste' (St. John, i. 208). But he did not wholly withdraw him- 
self from public life. Early in 1593 he was elected for Michael 
in Cornwall, and took an active part in the proceedings of the 
house. On 28 Feb. he spoke in support of open war with Spain. 
On 20 March he strenuously opposed the extensions of the privi- 
leges of aliens, and his speech was answered by Sir Robert Cecil. 
On 4 April he spoke with much ability and tact in favour of the 
Brownists, or rather against religious persecution (D'Ewes, 
Journals, pp. 478, 490, 493, 508-509, 517; Edwards, i. 271). 

New difficulties followed his sojourn in London during the ses- 



THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH 343 

sion. Passionately devoted to literature and science, he asso- 
ciated in London with men of letters of all classes and tastes. He 
was, with Cotton and Selden, a member of the Society of Anti- 
quaries that had been formed by Archbishop Parker and lasted 
till 1605 {ArchcBologia, i. xxv), and to him is assigned the first 
suggestion of those meetings at the Mermaid tavern in Bread 
Street which Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and many lesser writers 
long graced with their presence. He made valuable suggestions 
to Richard Hakluyt, when he was designing his great collection 
of ^Voyages' (cf. History of the World, bk. ii. cap. iii. sect. viii.). 
But it was not only literary and archaeological topics that Ralegh 
discussed with his literary or antiquarian friends. Although he 
did not personally adopt the scepticism in matters of religion 
which was avowed by many Elizabethan authors, it attracted his 
speculative cast of mind, and he sought among the sceptics his 
closest companions. Thomas Harriot, who acknowledged him- 
self to be a deist, he took into his house, on his return from Vir- 
ginia, in order to study mathematics with him. With Christopher 
Marlowe, whose religious views were equally heterodox, he was 
in equally confidential relations. Izaak Walton testifies that he 
wrote the well-known answer to Marlowe's familiar lyric, ' Come, 
live with me and be my love.' 

There is little doubt that Ralegh, Harriot, and Marlowe, and 
some other personal friends, including Ralegh's brother Carew, 
were all in 1592 and 1593 members of a select coterie which fre- 
quently debated religious topics with perilous freedom. Accord- 
ing to a catholic pamphleteer writing in 1592, and calling himself 
Philopatris, the society was known as ' Sir Walter Rawley's 
School of Atheisme.' The master was stated to be a conjuror 
(doubtless a reference to Harriot), and ' much diligence was said to 
be used to get young gentlemen to this school, wherein both Moyses 
and our Sauior, the old and the new Testaments are iested at and 
the schollers taught among other things to spell God backwards' 
{An Advertisement written to a Secretarie of my L. Treasurers of 
Ingland by an Inglishe Intelligencer, 1592, p. 18). In May 1593 
the coterie's proceedings were brought to the notice of the privy 
council. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Marlowe and 
another, but Marlowe died next month, before it took effect. 



344 



SIDNEY LEE 



Ralegh had doubtless returned to Sherborne after the dissolution of 
parliament on lo April. But later in the year the lord keeper, 
Puckering, made searching inquiries into Ralegh's and his friends' 
relations with the freethinking dramatist. A witness deposed that 
Marlowe had read an atheistical lecture to Ralegh and others. 
On 21 March 1593-4 a special commission, headed by Thomas 
Howard, viscount Bindon, was directed to pursue the investiga- 
tion at Cerne in Dorset, in the neighbourhood of Sherborne, and 
to examine Ralegh, his brother Carew, 'Mr. Th)nineof Wiltshire,' 
and 'one Heryott of Sir Walter Rawleigh's house' as to their 
alleged heresies. Unfortunately the result of the investigation is 
not acessible {Harl. MS. 7042, p. 401) [see Kyd, Thomas; Mar- 
LOW^E, Christopher]. In June 1594 Ralegh spent a whole night 
in eagerly discussing religious topics with the Jesuit John Corne- 
lius [q. v.], while the latter lay under arrest at Wolverton (Foley, 
Jesuits, iii. 461-2). 

But Ralegh was soon seeking with characteristic versatility 
somewhat less hazardous means of satisfying his speculative in- 
stinct. He had been fascirtated by the Spanish legend of the 
fabulous wealth of the city of Manoa in South America, 'which 
the Spaniards call Eldorado,' and he desired to investigate it. 
Early in 1594 his wife, who deprecated the project, wrote to Cecil 
entreating him 'rather to stay him than further him' (Edwards, 
i. 160). Probably owing to his wife's influence, Ralegh delayed 
going out himself, and in the first instance sent his tried servant, 
Jacob Whiddon, with instructions to explore the river Orinoco 
and its tributaries, which intersect the country now known as 
Venezuela, but long called by the Spanish settlers Guayana or 
Guiana. Whiddon returned towards the end of the year without 
any definite information. Ralegh was undaunted. He had 
already resolved to essay the adventure himself, and on 9 Feb. 
1594-5 he sailed from Plymouth with a fleet of five ships, fitted 
out principally at his own cost, Cecil and the lord admiral being 
also interested in the voyage, and with a commission from the 
queen to wage war against the Spaniard. On 22 March he arrived 
at the island of Trinidad, off the Venezuelan coast, where he at- 
tacked and took the town of San Josef. He seized Berreo, gov- 
ernor of Trinidad, who, stimulated by the appearance of Whiddon 



THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH 345 

the year before, had written home suggesting the immediate occu- 
pation of the country adjoining the Orinoco. In fact an expedi- 
tion for this purpose sailed from San Lucar about the same time 
that Ralegh sailed from Plymouth, but it did not arrive at Trinidad 
till April. 

Ralegh's intercourse with his prisoner had meantime been most 
friendly, and Berreo showed Ralegh an official copy of a deposi- 
tion made by one Juan Martinez, who, on the point of death, 
declared that, having fallen into the hands of the Indians of the 
Orinoco, he had been detained for seven months in Manoa, the rich- 
ness and wonders of which he described at length. Ralegh, like 
the Spaniards, accepted the story, in which there is nothing im- 
probable. 'It is not yet proven that there was not in the six- 
teenth century some rich and civilised kingdom, like Peru or 
Mexico, in the interior of South America' (Kingsley, Miscel- 
lanies, 1859, i. 44). The reports of dogheaded men, or of 'men 
whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders,' may have originated 
in the disguises of the Indian medicine-men {ih. i. 45). Early in 
April, leaving his ships at Los Gallos, Ralegh started on his ad- 
venturous search for the gold-mine of Manoa, with a little flotilla 
of five boats, about one hundred men, and provisions for a 
month. 

The equipment and the means at his disposal proved inadequate. 
Entering by the Manamo mouth from the bay of Guanipa, and 
so into the Orinoco itself, near where San Rafael now is, the labour 
of rowing against the stream of the river in flood was excessive ; 
and when, after struggling upwards for an estimated distance of 
four hundred miles, they turned into the Caroni, it was often 
found impossible to make more than 'one stone's cast in an hour.' 
They pushed on for forty miles further, when their provisions 
were nearly exhausted, and they were still without any prospect of 
reaching Manoa. Ralegh reluctantly decided to give up the attempt 
for the present, hoping to try again at some future time. Leaving 
a man and a boy behind with a tribe of friendly Indians, so that on 
his return he might find competent interpreters, or possibly even 
guides to Manoa, he and his companions rapidly descended the 
river with the current, and rejoined their ships. They carried 
with them sundry pieces of 'white spar' or quartz, 'on the out- 



346 SIDNEY LEE 

side of which appeared some small grains of gold,' and these, 
being afterwards assayed in London, were reported to contain pure 
gold in proportions varying from 12,000 to 26,900 pounds to the 
ton, the reference being apparently to the 'assay pound' of 12 
grains (information from Professor Roberts-Austen). They are 
also said to have brought back the earliest specimens of mahogany 
known in England. From Trinidad Ralegh followed the north 
coast of South America, levied contributions from the Spaniards 
at Cumana and Rio de Hacha, and returned to England in August. 
But he had powerful enemies, some of whom declared that the 
whole story of the voyage was a fiction. It was to refute this 
slander that he wrote his 'Discoverie of Guiana,' 1596, 4to. At 
the same time he drew a map, which was not yet finished when the 
book was published. This map, long supposed to be lost (Schom- 
BURGK, p. 26n.), is identical with a map in the British Museum 
(Add. MS. 17940A), dated about 1650 in the Catalogue, but shown 
to be Ralegh's by a careful comparison with the text of the ' Dis- 
coverie' and with Ralegh's known handwriting (Kohl, Des- 
criptive Catalogue of Maps . . . relating to A merica . . . men- 
tioned in vol. Hi. of Hakluyfs Great Work', information from 
Mr. C. H. Coote). A facsimile of the map is in vol. ii. of 'Ham- 
burgische Festschrift zur Erinnerung an die Entdeckung Am- 
erika's' (1892). 

Ralegh's accuracy as a topographer and cartographer of Guiana 
or the central district of Venezuela has been established by sub- 
sequent explorers, nor is there reason to doubt that the gold-mine 
which he sought really existed. The quartz which he brought home 
doubtless came from the neighbourhood of the river Yuruari (an 
afHuent of the Caroni), where gold was discovered in 1849 t)y Dr. 
Louis Plassard, and has, since 1857, been procured in large quan- 
tities. The prosperous El CallSo mine in this region was probably 
the object of Ralegh's search (C. Le Neve Foster, 'Caratal Gold 
Fields of Venezuela,' reprinted from Quarterly Jour, of Geolog. 
Soc. August 1869, and the same writer's 'Ralegh's Gold Mine,' 
in Brit. Assoc. Rep. 1869, PP- 162-3). 

On his return in 1595 Ralegh retired to Sherborne, and, as lord 
lieutenant of Cornwall, prepared for the defence of the country 
against a threatened invasion from Spain. This prevented his 



THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH 



347 



personally undertaking a new voyage to Guiana; but in January 
1595-1596 he sent out his trusty friend, Lawrence Kemys [q. v.], 
who brought back the news that the Spaniards, under orders from 
Berreo, had re-established themselves in force at San Tomas, near 
the mouth of the Caroni, where an earlier settlement had been 
abandoned (Hakluyt, iii. 672; Gardiner, iii. 444-5, where the 
position of San Tomas is discussed). 

Meantime Ralegh took a brilliant part in the expedition to 
Cadiz in June 1596. He commanded the van — himself in the 
leading ship, the Warspite — as the fleet forced its way into the 
harbour, and, though severely wounded, he was carried on shore 
when the men landed for the storming of the town. By his com- 
mission as a general officer he had a voice in the councils of war, 
but his share in swaying the decision to attack, which we know 
only from his own narrative (Edwards, ii. 147-8), may easily 
be exaggerated, and is contradicted by Sir William Monson, the 
captain of Essex's ship, the Dieu Repulse ('Naval Tracts' in 
Churchill, Voyages, 1704, iii. 185). On his return Ralegh was 
again busied with the despatch of a vessel to push discovery in the 
Orinoco. She sailed from the Thames in October, but did not 
leave Weymouth till 27 Dec, and by the end of June 1597 she was 
back at Plymouth without having been able to gain any further in- 
telligence (Hakluyt, iii. 692). As far as Ralegh was concerned, 
the project was dropped for the next twenty years, though others 
made fruitless attempts in the same direction [see Leigh, Charles, 

d. 1605]. «... 

Ralegh had been commended for his share in the taking of Cadiz; 
his friends believed that the queen's wrath was wearing itself out, 
and Essex was not hostile. In May 1597 Ralegh was in daily 
attendance at the court, and on i June he 'was brought by Cecil 
to the queen, who used him very graciously and gave him full 
authority to execute his place as captain of the guard. In the 
evening he rid abroad with the queen, and had private conference 
with her' (Edwards, i. 226). For the next few weeks he seems 
to have been on familiar, almost friendly, terms with Essex. Mean- 
time the intelligence from Spain showed that Philip was preparing 
to take revenge for the loss he had sustained at Cadiz. Ralegh 
drew up a paper entitled 'Opinion on the Spanish Alarum,' in 



348 SIDNEY LEE 

support of the contention that the cheapest and surest way to 
defend England was to strike beforehand at Spain. The idea 
had been forcibly urged by Drake ten years before, but the time 
was now more favourable and the advice accorded with the queen's 
inclinations. It had been intended to send out a squadron of ten 
ships under Lord Thomas Howard, with Ralegh as vice-admiral. 
The fleet was now increased, it was joined by a squadron of Dutch 
ships, and Essex, as admiral and general, took command of the 
whole. On lo July it put to sea, but was dispersed in a gale and 
driven back with some loss. It could not sail again till 17 Aug., 
and then with a diminished force, a great part of the troops being 
left behind. Off Cape Finisterre the fleet was for the second time 
scattered by bad weather, and only by slow degrees was it collected 
at Flores, in the Azores, where it was determined to lie in wait for 
the Spanish treasure ships from the West Indies. But Essex had 
intelligence that it was doubtful if they would come at all, and that, 
if they did, they would take a more southerly route. He therefore 
resolved to wait for them at Fayal, and sailed thither, giving 
Ralegh orders to follow as soon as his ships had watered. Ralegh, 
following in haste, arrived at the rendezvous before Essex, and 
seeing that the inhabitants were putting the town in a state of 
defence, he landed and took it without waiting for Essex, who, on 
coming in, was exceedingly angry to find that he had been antici- 
pated. He accused Ralegh of having disobeyed the instructions, 
by landing 'without the general's presence or order.' Ralegh 
appealed to the actual words, that ' no captain of any ship or 
company . . . shall land anywhere without directions from the 
general or some other principal commander,' he being, he main- 
tained, 'a principal commander, named by the queen as com- 
mander of the whole fleet in succession to Essex and Howard.' 
Common sense justified Ralegh's action, and Essex was obliged to 
waive the point, though several of his friends are said to have in- 
cited him to bring Ralegh to a court-martial {ih. i. 242). The 
quarrel was healed for the time by the intervention of Howard, 
and the fleet kept at sea till the middle of October, making some 
valuable prizes and destroying many others. On its return the 
troops were distributed in the western garrisons, and Ralegh, in 
conjunction with Lord Thomas Howard and Lord Mount joy, 



THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH 349 

was occupied in preparations for the defence of the coast against 
any possible attempts on the part of Spain. 

During the years immediately following, his time was, for the 
most part, divided between the court and the west country, with 
an occasional visit to Ireland. In 1597 he was chosen member of 
parliament for Dorset, and in 1601 for Cornwall. In the last par- 
liament he defended monopohes, which were attacked with much 
heat in a debate of 19 Nov. 1601. He is reported to have blushed 
when a fellow-member spoke of the iniquity of a monopoly of 
playing-cards, and he elaborately explained his relations with the 
monopoly of tin, which he owned as lord warden of the stannaries, 
but he said nothing of his equally valuable monopoly of sweet 
wines (D'Ewes, Journals of Parliaments, p. 645). In July 1600, 
after the news of the battle of Nieuport, he, jointly with Lord 
Cobham, with whom he was now first intimately associated, was 
sent to Ostend with a gracious message from the queen to Lord 
Grey [see Brooke, Henry, eighth Lord Cobham ; Grey, Thomas, 
fifteenth Lord Grey of Wilton]. In the following September 
he was appointed governor of Jersey, and at once repaired to the 
island, where he instituted a pubHc registry of title-deeds, which 
is still an important feature of the insular land system, and he 
practically created the trade in fish between Jersey and Newfound- 
land (Pegot-Ogier, lies de la Manche, p. 326; Falle, Jersey, 
ed. Durell, p. 397; Prov^se, Hist, of Newfoundland, pp. 52, 76). 
But the old quarrel with Essex was still smouldering. In season 
and out of season, Essex and his partisans, especially Sir Chris- 
topher Blount [q. v.], were loud in their denunciations of Ralegh. 
Essex, writing to the queen on 25 June 1599, accused him of 'wish- 
ing the ill-success of your majesty's most important action, the 
decay of your greatest strength, and the destruction of your faith- 
fullest servants' (Edv^ards, i. 254), and at the last he asserted 
that it was to counteract Ralegh's plots that he had come over 
from Ireland, and 'pretended that he took arms principally to 
save himself from Cobham and Ralegh, who, he gave out, should 
have murdered him in his house' (Cecil to Sir George Carew, 
ib. i. 255). It was untruthfully alleged that Ralegh had placed an 
ambuscade to shoot Essex as he passed on his way from Ireland 
to the lords of the council in I^ondon. Blount, pretending to seek 



350 



SIDNEY LEE 



a means of retaliating, shot four times at Ralegh ; he had already 
vainly suggested to Sir Ferdinando Gorges that Ralegh's removal 
would do Essex good service (Oldys, p. ZZZ)- 

Ralegh was not disposed to submit meekly to this active hos- 
tility. At an uncertain date — probably in 1601 — he wrote 
of Essex to Cecil: 'If you take it for a good counsel to relent 
towards this tyrant, you will repent it when it shall be too late. 
His malice is fixed, and will not evaporate by any your mild courses. 
. . . For after revenges, fear them not; for your own father 
was esteemed to be the contriver of Norfolk's ruin, yet his son 
followeth your father's son and loveth him' (cf. St. John, 
ii. 38; and Devereux, Lives of the Devereux, ii. 177). When 
Essex was brought out for execution, Ralegh was present, but 
withdrew on hearing it murmured that he was there to feast his 
eyes on his enemy's sufferings. Blount afterwards admitted that 
neither he nor Essex had really believed that Ralegh had plotted 
against the earl's life; 'it was,' he said, 'a word cast out to 
colour other matters;' and on the scaffold he entreated pardon 
of Ralegh, who was again present, possibly in his oflScial capacity 
as captain of the guard. His attitude towards Essex and his 
party seems to have led Sir Amyas Preston to send him, in 1602, a 
challenge, which he accepted. He arranged his papers and affairs 
as a precautionary measure, entailing the Sherborne estate on his 
son Walter; but for some unexplained reason the duel did not 
take place. About the same date he began negotiations for the 
sale of much of his Irish property to Richard Boyle, first earl of 
Cork; the transaction was not completed until 1604, after 
Ralegh's attainder, when Boyle secured all the Irish estates (cf. 
Lismore Papers, ed. Grosart, ist ser. iv. 258; 2nd ser. ii. 38-49, 
157-9, iii- 59~62, V. passim). 

Meantime political intrigues centred round the king of Scots. 
For at least two years before the death of the queen, James was 
systematically informed that Ralegh was opposed to his claims, 
and was ready to proceed to any extremities to prevent his acces- 
sion to the throne. The letters were written by Lord Henry 
Howard (afterwards Earl of Northampton) [q. v.], probably with 
the knowledge, if not the approval, of Cecil. The result, at any 
rate, was that James crossed the border with a strong prepossession 



THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH 



351 



against Ralegh; and when Ralegh, who had been in the west, 
hastened to meet him, he was received with marked discourtesy. 
A fortnight later he was deprived of his post of captain of the guard ; 
he was persuaded or compelled to resign the wardenship of the 
stannaries and the governorship of Jersey; his lucrative patent 
of wine licenses was suspended as a monopoly; and he was or- 
dered, 'with unseemly haste,' to leave Durham House in the 
Strand. Such measures were a sure presage of his downfall ; but 
he still remained at court in occasional attendance on the king, 
hoping, it may be, to overcome the prejudice and win the royal 
favour. On or about 14 July he was summoned before the lords 
of the council, who examined him as to any knowledge he might 
have of the plot 'to surprise the king's person' [see Watson, 
William], or of any plot contrived between Lord Cobham and 
Count Aremberg, the Spanish agent in London. Of Watson's 
plot he was most probably entirely ignorant. With Cobham he 
was still on friendly terms, and Cobham had taken from his house 
a book by one Snagge, contesting James's title. Ralegh had 
once borrowed the work from Lord Burghley's library. More- 
over he knew that Cobham had been in correspondence with 
Aremberg. This he denied before the council, but he afterwards 
admitted it, and his prevarication, joined to his known intercourse 
with Cobham and his reasonable causes for discontent, appeared 
so suspicious that on 17 July he was sent a prisoner to the Tower. 
'Unable to endure his misfortunes,' he attempted to commit 
suicide (Edwards, i. 375). 

During the following months he was repeatedly examined by 
the lords of the council, and on 17 Nov, was brought to trial at 
Winchester before a special commission, which included among 
its members Lord Thomas Howard, now earl of Suffolk, Sir 
Charles Blount, now earl of Devonshire [q. v.]. Lord Henry How- 
ard, the newly created Lord Cecil, Sir John Popham [q. v.], lord 
chief justice, and several others. Of these, only Suffolk could be 
considered friendly. Nothing was proved in a manner which 
would satisfy a modern judge or a modern jury ; but the imputa- 
tion of guilt attached at the time to every prisoner committed 
by the lords of the council for trial on a charge of treason, un- 
less any convincing proof of his innocence were forthcoming. 



352 SIDNEY LEE 

This Ralegh could not produce. He knew something of Cob- 
ham's incriminating correspondence, and to know of or suspect 
the existence or even the conception of a traitorous plot without 
revealing it was to be particeps criminis. The jury without 
hesitation brought in a verdict of guilty — guilty of compassing 
the death of the king, 'the old fox and his cubs;' of endeavour- 
ing to set Arabella Stuart on the throne ; of receiving bribes from 
the court of Spain; of seeking to deliver the country into the 
hands of its enemy. Sentence was pronounced by Popham, but 
the commissioners undertook to petition the king to qualify the 
rigour of the punishment. The trial is a landmark in English 
constitutional history. The harsh principles then in repute 
among lawyers were enunciated by the judges with unprecedented 
distinctness, and as a consequence a reaction steadily set in from 
that moment in favour of the rights of individuals against the 
state (Gardiner, i, 138). 

Two days before Ralegh's trial, Watson, George Brooke, and 
four others were tried and condemned; a week later, Cobham 
and Grey. Ralegh was ordered to be executed on 11 Dec, and, 
in full expectation of death, he wrote a touching letter of farewell to 
his wife. This was published in 1644 with a few other small 
pieces in a volume entitled 'To-day a Man, To-morrow None,' 
in the 'Arraignment' of 1648, and in the 'Remaines' of 1651 
(cf. Edw^ards, ii. 284). But on 10 Dec. Ralegh, with Cobham 
and Grey, was reprieved; and on the i6th the three were sent up 
to London and committed to the Tower. All Ralegh's offices 
were vacated by his attainder, and his estates forfeited, but his 
personal property was now restored to him. In 1602, when he 
had assigned the manor of Sherborne to trustees for the benefit 
of his son Walter, he reserved the income from it to himself for 
life. This life interest now fell to the king, but on 30 July 1604 a 
sixty years' term of Sherborne and ten other Dorset and Somerset 
manors was granted by the crown to trustees to be held by them 
for Lady Ralegh and her son. Soon afterwards a legal flaw was 
discovered in the deed of 1602 conveying Sherborne to the trustees 
of the son Walter. After much legal argument the judges in 1608 
declared the whole property to be forfeited under the attainder, 
and the arrangement of 1604 to be void. Lady Ralegh, in a per- 
sonal interview, entreated James to waive his claim, but withdrew 



THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH 



353 



her opposition on receiving a promise of 400/. a year for her life 
and that of her son, together with a capital sum of 8,000/. The 
Sherborne property, which was of the estimated rental of 750/., 
was thereupon bestowed on the king's favourite, Robert Carr, 
earl of Somerset. Shortly before Prince Henry's death in 161 2 
he begged it of James, who compensated Carr with 20,000/. The 
prince intended to restore the estate to Ralegh, but died before 
he could effect his design, and Carr retook possession, but on his 
attainder in 16 16, Sherborne was sold to John Digby, earl of 
Bristol, for 10,000/. (Stebbing, pp. 244, 261-4; Carew Ralegh, 
Brief Relation, 1669). 

Ralegh was treated leniently in prison. He had apartments 
in the upper story of the Bloody Tower, where his wife and son, 
with their personal attendants, also lived, at the rate, for household 
expenses, of about 200/. a year. But his health suffered from 
cold {Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. viii. 107), and frequent efforts 
were made by his enemies to concoct fresh charges of disloyalty 
against him. In 16 10 they succeeded in depriving him for three 
months of the society of his wife, who was ordered to leave the 
Tower. In Prince Henry, however, he found a useful friend. 
The prince was mainly attracted by Ralegh's studies in science 
and literature, to which his enforced leisure was devoted. For 
the prince, Ralegh designed a model of a ship. Encouraged by 
him, he began his ^History of the World.' and for his guidance 
designed many political treatises. In a laboratory, or 'still- house,' 
allowed him in the Tower garden for chemical and philosophical 
experiments, he condensed fresh from salt water (an art only 
practised generally during the present century) (cf. Cat. State 
Papers, Dom. 1606-7), ^^^ compounded drugs, chief among 
which was his 'Great Cordial or Elixir.' Ralegh's own prescrip- 
tion is not extant, but Nicholas le Febre compounded it in the 
presence of Charles II on 20 Sept. 1662 (Evelyn, Diary, ii. 152), 
and printed an account of the demonstration in 1664. At the 
same time whatever books Ralegh chose to buy or borrow were 
freely at his disposal, and he interested himself in the scientific 
researches of his fellow-prisoner, Henry Percy, ninth earl of 
Northumberland [q. v.], into whose service he introduced Harriot, 
his old friend and fellow-worker. 

2A 



354 



SIDNEY LEE 



As early as 1610, possibly earlier, Ralegh sought permission for 
another venture to the Orinoco. He was willing to command an 
expedition himself, or to serve as guide to any persons appointed. 
'If I bring them not,' he wrote, 'to a mountain covered with gold 
and silver ore, let the commander have commission to cut off my 
head there' (Edwards, ii. 393). His proposal received some en- 
couragement, and in 1611 or 1612 certain lords of the council 
offered to send Kemys with two ships, on condition that the charge 
should be borne by Ralegh if Kemys failed to bring back at least 
half a ton of gold ore similar to the specimens. Ralegh objected 
that it was 'a matter of exceeding difficulty for any man to find the 
same acre of ground again in a country desolate and overgrown 
which he hath seen but once, and that sixteen years since.' 
'Yet,' he wrote, 'that your lordships may be satisfied of the 
truth, I am contented to adventure all I have, but my reputation, 
upon Kemys' memory;' the condition on the other side being 
' that half a ton of the former ore being brought home, then 
I shall have my liberty, and in the meanwhile my free pardon 
under the great seal, to be left in his majesty's hands till the 
end of the journey' {ih. ii. 338-9). There can, however, be 
little doubt that Cecil, now earl of Salisbury, did not encourage 
the scheme, but the king yielded to the representations of Sir 
Ralph Winwood [q. v.], Ralegh's steadfast friend, and of Sir 
George Villiers (afterwards duke of Buckingham) [q. v.]. The 
warrant for his release was dated 19 March 16 15-16; but it 
appears that he was actually discharged from the Tower two 
or three days earlier, though he continued throughout the year 
under the guard of a keeper {ih. i. 563; ii. 341; Gardiner, 
ii. 381). 

During the following months he was busy in preparations for 
the voyage. He had no support from the crown, and he and his 
wife adventured all they had, including the 8,000/., or as much of 
it as had been paid in compensation for the resumption of Sher- 
borne, and some land of hers at Mitch am (cf. Notes and Queries, 
ist ser. xi. 262, 2nd ser. ix. 331). The gentlemen volunteers who 
gathered round Ralegh subscribed the rest. Among these were 
Charles Parker, a brother of William Parker, fourth baron 
Monteagle [q. v.]; Captain North, brother of Dudley, third lord 



THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH 



355 



North [q. v.]; Sir Warham St. Leger, son of Ralegh's old 
comrade in Ireland; and George Ralegh, a son of Ralegh's 
brother George. With them were Kemys, Captain (afterwards 
Sir John) Penington [q. v.], and others of good repute as sea- 
men or as soldiers; but as a rule the merchants of London, or 
Bristol, or Plymouth, like the seafaring folk of the west country, 
held aloof from the enterprise. His ships were thus filled up 
with 'the world's scum.' Even of the volunteers, many of them 
were 'drunkards, blasphemers, and other such as their fathers, 
brothers, and friends thought it an exceeding good gain to be 
discharged of with the hazard of some thirty, forty, or fifty 
pounds, knowing they could not have lived a whole year so 
cheap at home' ('Apology for the Voyage to Guiana,' Works, 
viii. 480). 

As soon as the proposed voyage to the Orinoco was publicly 
spoken of, Sarmiento, the Spanish ambassador, vehemently pro- 
tested against it. All Guiana (the modern Venezuela), he asserted, 
belonged to the king of Spain, and Ralegh's incursion would be 
an invasion of Spanish territory, but he thought it more probable 
that Ralegh meant to lie in wait for and attack the Mexican plate 
fleet, in practical disregard of the peace between the two countries. 
Ralegh protested that he had no intention of turning pirate ; that 
the mine really existed, and added, according to Sarmiento, that 
it was neither in nor near the king of Spain's territories — a state- 
ment palpably false (Gardiner, iii. 39). Ralegh knew that the 
Spaniards had taken possession of the district (Edwards, ii. 
2,2)^). Ralegh had stringent orders not to engage in any hostili- 
ties against the Spaniards, and was assured that disobedience 
would cost him his life (Gardiner, iii. 44 n). This warning he 
treated as mainly intended to satisfy Sarmiento, and as an inti- 
mation of the possible result of failure. To Bacon he spoke 
openly of seizing the Mexican plate fleet, and to Bacon's objection 
that that would be piracy, he answered 'Did you ever hear of 
men being pirates for millions?' {ih. p. 48). 

While the preparations were in progress another design occurred 
to him. Towards the end of 16 16 war again broke out between 
Spain and Savoy, and Savoy turned to France and England for 
support. Genoa, nominally neutral, was rendering valuable aid 



356 SIDNEY LEE 

to Spain. James was not unwilling to assist Savoy, but was 
destitute of the means, and Ralegh, understanding the situation 
from Winwood, suggested to the Savoyard ambassador in London 
that he should urge the king to divert the Guiana squadron to an 
assault on Genoa. James, after considering the proposal, de- 
clined to sanction a change in the destination of Ralegh's expedi- 
tion {ih. pp. 50-52). Ralegh, however, was anxious to obtain 
some further security for his life in case of failure. With that 
view he entered into negotiations with the French ambassador in 
London, and with the admiral of France, hoping for the assistance 
of some French ships, and a safe retreat to France in the event of 
defeat. The confused evidence points to the conclusion that 
Ralegh had determined to attempt the capture of the Mexican 
plate fleet, to establish himself in force at the mine, and to seize the 
islands of Trinidad and Margarita as the keys of the position. 
He believed that success, in spite of his orders, would win the 
king's pardon, but, if not, that the treasure he would carry with 
him would insure him a favourable reception in France. He sailed 
from Plymouth with a squadron of fourteen ships on 12 June 161 7. 
The voyage was unfortunate from the first. Foul winds and 
storms drove him back, and afterwards scattered his fleet; one 
ship was sunk. Most of them, more or less disabled, put into the 
harbour of Cork. In July Ralegh paid a visit to Sir Richard 
Boyle, who lent him 100/., and next month he entered into a part- 
nership with Boyle for the working of the copper mine at Balli- 
garren (Lismore Papers, ed. Grosart, ist ser. i. 158, 163, 2nd ser. 
ii. 86-96). He was not ready to sail again till 19 Aug. At the 
Canaries the Spaniards were sullenly obstructive; it was only 
after being refused at two of the islands that they were allowed to 
water at Gomera. From the Cape Verde Islands they were driven 
by a hurricane. Calms and foul winds followed; they lay for 
forty days in the Doldrums, short of water, a prey to scurvy and 
fever. Great numbers of the men, with several of the captains 
and superior officers, died. Ralegh himself was stricken with 
fever. The crews were mutinous. It was afterwards stated 
that Ralegh encouraged them with assurances of capturing 
the Mexican fleet if the mine failed (Gardiner, iii. 118). On 
arriving off the mouth of the Oyapok he hoped to be joined by 



THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH 357 

Leonard, an Indian whom he had brought to England on his 
former voyage, and who had lived with him for three or four 
years. But Leonard was not there, and Ralegh moved his squad- 
ron, reduced by wreck or separation to ten ships, to the mouth of 
the Cayenne. There he was welcomed by friendly natives whose 
affection he had won twenty years before. 'To tell you,' he 
wrote to his wife on 14 Nov., 'that I might be king of the Indians 
were but vanity. . . . They feed me with fresh meat and all 
that the country yields' (Edwards, ii. 347). When the men were 
somewhat refreshed, and recovered from sickness, he moved to the 
Isle de Salut, and there prepared for the farther adventure. Five 
of the ships were small enough to cross the bar and go up the 
river, and in these he put four hundred men. He himself was 
too feeble from the effects of the fever to accompany them, and it 
was the general wish that he should remain behind. It was ex- 
pected that a hostile Spanish fleet would arrive, with which Ralegh 
could best deal. 'You shall find me,' he told the expeditionary 
force, 'at Pun to Gallo, dead or alive; and if you find not my 
ships there, yet you shall find their ashes. For I will fire with the 
galleons if it come to extremity, but run away I will never' 
(Gardiner, iii. 121). 

The chief command of the expedition up the river he entrusted 
to Kemys; his nephew, George Ralegh, was to command the 
soldiers, among whom was his son Walter. Ralegh gave orders 
that they should land at a point agreed on, and march to the mine, 
said to be three miles distant. If they were attacked by the Span- 
iards in moderate force they were to repel them ; but ' if without 
manifest peril of my son,' he said to Kemys, ' yourself, and other 
captains, you cannot pass toward the mine, then be well advised 
how you land. For I know, a few gentlemeh excepted, what a scum 
of men you have, and I would not for all the world receive a blow 
from the Spaniard to the dishonour of our nation' {ih. p. 120). 
The expedition started on 10 Dec, but the settlement of San Tomas 
had been moved several miles lower down the river, and it was 
impossible to pass it without being seen, or to march to the mine 
without the danger of falling into an ambuscade. Kemys de- 
cided to attack the town, which was stormed and burnt, though 
with the loss of young Walter, Ralegh's son. The Spaniards 



358 SIDNEY LEE 

took to the woods, and, in face of their opposition, Kemys judged 
it impossible to reach the mine. He accordingly returned, and 
rejoined Ralegh at Punto Gallo, only to kill himself in despair at 
the bitter reproach to which Ralegh gave vent. He had brought 
fresh evidence of the existence and wealth of the mine, and Ralegh 
wished to lead his men back for another attempt. But they 
shrank from adventure; he could neither persuade nor compel 
them; they were thoroughly disheartened. He proposed to 
them to look out for the Mexican fleet ; they refused, the captains 
equally with the men. ' What shall we be the better ? ' they said ; 
'for when we come home the king shall have what we have gotten, 
and we shall be hanged' (ib. p. 127). Several of the ships parted 
company. Some of them went to Newfoundland, and thence, 
with a cargo of fish on their own account, to the Mediterranean. 
After touching at St. Kitts, whence he sent letters to England, 
Ralegh also went to Newfoundland. He had only now four ships 
with him, and though with these he would fain have kept the sea 
in hopes of capturing some rich prize, his men refused to follow 
him. He realised the danger that awaited him in England, and, 
as a penniless outcast, he would be scarcely more welcome in 
France. With much hesitation he went to meet his fate in Eng- 
land, and arrived at Plymouth about the middle of June 1618. 

Already the news of the attack at San Tomas and of the failure 
of the expedition had reached the king, and the Spanish minister, 
now Conde de Gondomar, demanded satisfaction in accordance 
with James's promise that 'if Ralegh returned loaded with gold 
acquired by an attack on the subjects of the king of Spain, he 
would surrender it all, and would give up the authors of the crime 
to be hanged in the public square of Madrid.' James assured 
him that he would be as good as his word {ib. iii. 132). The 
council resented Gondomar's language to the king; but James, 
supported by Buckingham, convinced it that Ralegh ought to be 
punished. On 22 June James assured Gondomar that justice 
should be done, and Gondomar replied with a sneer ' that Ralegh 
and his followers were in England, and had not been hanged.' 
James, although stung to fury, agreed to propose to the council 
to send Ralegh and some dozen of his followers to Spain. Three 
days later he promised Gondomar that Ralegh should be sur- 



THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH 359 

rendered, unless Philip expressly asked that he should be hanged 
in England (cf. 'Documents relating to Ralegh's last voyages' 
by S. R. Gardiner in Camd. Soc. Miscellany, 1864, vol. v.). 

Shortly after his arrival at Plymouth Ralegh set out for London ; 
but at Ashburton he was arrested by his cousin, Sir Lewis Stucley 
or Stukeley [q. v.], who took him back to Plymouth, where he was 
left much to himself. The opportunity suggested the advisability 
of escaping to France, but while he was still hesitating orders came 
for him to be taken to London. There also he was left at large, 
but, attempting to escape to a French ship at Gravesend, he was 
arrested, brought back, and lodged in the Tower. He had mean- 
time drawn up his 'Apology' (JVorks, viii. 479), which is rather 
a justification of his conduct than a defence against the charge. 
'To James it must have appeared tantamount to a confession of 
guilt; to all who knew what the facts were it stamped him as a 
liar convicted by his own admission' (Gardiner, iii. 141). 

Commissioners were now appointed to inquire into what had 
been done. With Lord-chancellor Bacon at their head, they were 
all men of good repute, and there is no reason to doubt that they 
performed their duty conscientiously; Ralegh was examined, but 
his statements contradicted each other, till, 'exasperated by the 
audacity of his lying, they came to the conclusion that there was not 
a single word of truth in his assertions ; that his belief in the very 
existence of the mine was a mere fiction invented for the purpose 
of imposing upon his too credulous sovereign' {ih. p. 142); and 
that his lies must be taken as an admission of his guilt. James 
accordingly gave orders for him to be brought to trial, but was told 
that, as Ralegh was already under sentence of death, he could 
not now be legally tried. If he was to be executed, it must be 
on the former sentence. On 22 Oct. Ralegh was brought for 
the last time before the commissioners, when, in the name of 
his colleagues, Bacon, after pronouncing him guilty of abusing 
the confidence of his sovereign, told him that he was to die. 
On 28 Oct. he was brought before the justices of the king's 
bench, when he argued that the Winchester sentence was dis- 
charged by his commission for the late voyage. He was told that, 
'unless he could produce an express pardon from the king, no 
argument that he could use would be admissible.' In that case, 



360 SIDNEY LEE 

he answered, he had nothing to do but throw himself on the king's 
mercy; whereupon the chief justice, Sir Henry Montagu (after- 
wards earl of Manchester) [q. v.], awarded execution according 
to law {ib. p. 148). On the following morning, 29 Oct., he was 
brought to the scaffold erected in Old Palace Yard. He met his 
death calmly and cheerfully, and of his last words many have 
become almost proverbial. As he laid his head on the block some 
one objected that it ought to be towards the east. . 'What matter,' 
he answered, ' how the head lie, so the heart be right ?' than which, 
says Mr. Gardiner, no better epitaph could be found for him. 
An official 'Declaration' of his demeanour and carriage was issued 
a few days later and was frequently reprinted. His remains were 
deKvered to his wife, and they were buried in the chancel of St. 
Margaret's Church, Westminster, in spite of Lady Ralegh's wish 
that he should be buried at Beddington ; the head she caused to be 
embalmed, and she kept it by her in a red leather bag as long as she 
lived. It seems to have passed into the possession of her son 
Carew, but what ultimately became of it is uncertain. A me- 
morial window was placed in 1882 by American citizens in St. 
Margaret's Church, with an inscription by James Russell Lowell. 
The high position Ralegh had occupied, the greatness of his down- 
fall, the general feeling that the sentence pronounced in 1603 was 
unjust, and that the carrying of it into execution in 1618 was base, 
all contributed to exalt the popular appreciation of his character. 
His enemies had denounced him as proud, covetous, and unscrupu- 
lous, and much evidence is extant in support of the unfavourable 
judgment. But the circumstances of his death concentrated 
men's attention on his bold exploits against his country's enemies, 
and to him was long attributed an importance in affairs of state or 
in conduct of war which the recital of his acts fails to justify. He 
was regarded as the typical champion of English interests against 
Spanish aggression, a view which found its most concentrated 
expression in the popular tract 'Sir Walter Rawleigh's Ghost, or 
England's Forewarner,' by Thomas Scott (Utrecht, 1626, and 
frequently reissued). Physical courage, patriotism, resourceful- 
ness may be ungrudgingly ascribed to him. But he had small 
regard for truth, and reckless daring was the main characteristic 
of his stirring adventures as politician, soldier, sailor, and traveller. 



THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH 36 1 

Ralegh acquired, however, a less ambiguous reputation in the 
pacific sphere of literature, and his mental calibre cannot be 
fairly judged, nor his versatility fully reaHsed, until his achieve- 
ments in poetry, in history, and political philosophy have been 
taken into account. However impetuous and rash was he in 
action, he surveyed life in his writings with wisdom and in 
sight, and recorded his observations with dignity and judicial 
calmness. 

It is difficult to reconcile the rehgious tone of his writings with 
the reputation for infidehty which attached to Ralegh until his 
death, and was admitted to be justifiable by Hume. The charges 
brought against Ralegh and Marlowe in 1593 were repeated in 
general terms within four months after his execution by Arch- 
bishop Abbot, who attributed the catastrophe to his 'question- 
ing' of 'God's being and omnipotence' (Abbot to Sir Thomas 
Roe, 19 Feb. 16 18-19). Such a charge seems confuted on 
almost every page of his 'History of the World,' in which he 
follows in the early chapters the Old Testament narrative with 
most confiding Hteralness, and earnestly insists throughout on 
God's beneficence. A similar sentiment finds repeated expression 
in his political essays. Nor in incidental references to the New 
Testament does he give any sign of incredulity (cf. Historie, bk. ii. 
chap. iv. sect, xi.), and nothing actually inconsistent with these 
views can be detected in two works in which he dealt with meta- 
physical speculation. The one 'The Sceptic,' first pubhshed in 
165 1, is a scholastic and inconclusive dissertation — Dr. Parr 
called it a 'lusus ingenii' — in which it is argued that the end- 
less varieties of physical formation, temperament, and capacity, 
discernible in Hving organisms, present insuperable obstacles 
to the universal acceptance among men of any one conception of 
truth. Doubt is therefore inevitable to man's reason; but no 
mention is made of religious behef, which, it seems clear from 
Ralegh's references to it elsewhere, he did not regard as dependent 
on man's reason. His 'Treatise of the Soul' (first published in 
the collected 'Works,' 1829) is a supersubtle and barren inquiry 
into the nature and function of the soul, mainly based on scriptural 
texts. The contemporary tone of rehgious orthodoxy generated 
reputations for infidelity on very slender provocation, and in 



362 SIDNEY LEE 

Ralegh's case the evil report doubtless sprang from his known love 
of orally discussing religion with men of all opinions, and of thus 
encouraging freedom of speech. But his friend Sir John Haring- 
ton affirmed that he personally kept within conventional bounds 
in such conferences. 'In religion,' Harington wrote in 1603, 
' he hath shown in private talk great depth and good reading, as I 
once experienced at his own house before many learned men' 
{Nugce Antiques, ii. 132). 

Throughout his career Ralegh solaced his leisure by writing 
verse, much of which is lost. All that is positively known to 
survive consists of thirty short pieces, many of which were origi- 
nally published anonymously, or under his initials in poetical 
anthologies, like the 'Phoenix Nest,' 1593; 'England's Helicon,' 
1600; or Davison's 'Poetical Rhapsody,' 1608 (cf. England^ s 
Helicon and Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, both edited by Mr. 
A. H. Bullen). But the signature of 'Sir W. R.' or of 'Ignoto,' 
which he adopted occasionally, is not always conclusive testimony 
that the pieces to which those signatures are attached were from 
Ralegh's pen. Dr. Hannah has noted twenty-five poems which 
have been wrongly assigned to him on such grounds. Nor can 
reliance be placed on the pretension advanced in behalf of very 
many of his poems that they were penned ' on the night before his 
execution.' 

A fragment only remains of Ralegh's chief effort in verse, a 
poem called 'Cynthia, the Lady of the Sea,' which was probably 
written during his enforced withdrawals from court in 1589 and 
1592-3. Gabriel Harvey described so much as was written 
before 1590 as 'a fine and sweet invention.' Puttenham doubtless 
referred to it in his 'Arte of Poesie' (1589), when he described 
Ralegh's 'vein' as 'most lofty, insolent, and passionate.' Ed- 
mund Spenser, who generously encouraged Ralegh's essays in 
poetry, wrote to him in 1590 of 'your own excellent conceit of 
Cynthia,' and thrice elsewhere referred to the work appreciatively, 
viz. in a sonnet to Ralegh prefixed to the first three books of the 
'Faerie Queene' (1590), in the introduction of the third book, 
and in 'CoHn Clout's come home again,' 1591. 'The twenty-first 
and last Book of the Ocean to Cynthia,' with a few verses of an 
unfinished twenty-second book is alone extant; this remains 



THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH 363 

among the Hatfield manuscripts, and has been printed by Dr. 
Hannah. But the latter erroneously styles it 'Continuation of the 
lost poem ''Cynthia," ' and assigns it to the period of Ralegh's 
imprisonment in the Tower. The two short poems which were 
found by Dr. Hannah in the same manuscript, and are printed by 
him as introductory to the twenty-first book, do not appear to 
form any part of 'Cynthia.' 'The twenty-first and last book' 
portrays with much poetic fervour and exuberance the despair of 
Ralegh at his exile from the presence of 'Cynthia,' who clearly 
is intended for Queen Elizabeth. Ralegh refers to himself as 
'the Shepherd of the Ocean,' an appellation that Spenser had con- 
ferred on him. The poem is in four-line stanzas, alternately 
rhymed. Among other attractive specimens of Ralegh's extant 
verse are a fine epitaph on Sir Philip Sidney (first printed anony- 
mously in the 'Phoenix Nest,' 1593); two commendatory poems 
on the 'Faerie Queene' (in the 1590 edition of the first three 
books) ; ' If all the world and love were young,' the reply to Mar- 
lowe's 'Come, live with me' (in 'England's Helicon,' 1600, 
signed 'Ignoto,' but ascribed to Ralegh in Walton's Compleat 
Angler); 'The Silent Lover,' a lyric (signed 'Sir W. R. ;' 
quoted by Lord Chesterfield in Letter 183 ; cf. Hannah, p. 20) ; 
'The Lie, or the Soul's Errand,' beginning 'Go Soul, the body's 
guest' (written before 1593; printed in Davison's 'Poetical 
Rhapsody,' 1608 anon., and with feeble alterations and additional 
stanzas in Joshua Sylvester's 'Posthumi,' 1633 and 1641); 'The 
Pilgrimage' (probably written in 1603; cf. Notes and Queries, 
ist ser. iv. 353), a remarkable proof of Ralegh's resigned temper 
in the presence of death, and a poem of somewhat lascivious tone, 
beginning 'Nature that wash'd her hands in milk,' which was 
first printed in full, from Harleian MS. 6917, f. 48, in Mr. Bul- 
len's ' Speculum Amantis,' p. 76. The masterly concluding stanza 
('O cruel Time, which takes on trust') of this last lyric was 
printed as a separate poem in the 'Remaines.' Among the books 
of his friend which Ralegh graced with prefatory verses were 
Gascoigne's 'Steele Glas,' 1576; Sir Arthur Gorges's 'Pharsaha,' 
T614; and William Lithgow's 'Pilgrims' Farewell,' 1618. Many 
quotations from the classics are translated metrically in the 
'History of the World.' Ralegh's poems were collected by Sir 



364 SIDNEY LEE 

S. Egerton Brydges in 18 14, but the best collection is that by Dr. 
Hannah, 1885. 

Somewhat similar difficulties to those that attach to the identi- 
fication of Ralegh's poetry beset his prose works. David Lloyd, 
in his 'Statesmen of England,' 1665, states that Hampden before 
the civil wars had transcribed at his cost 3,452 sheets of Ralegh's 
writings. The works remaining in manuscript or published under 
his name do not account for so bulky a mass. That much is lost 
is known. The missing works apparently include a 'Treatise of 
the West Indies' (cf. Discovery of Guiana, Ded.), a 'Description 
of the River Amazon' (Wood), a 'Treatise of Mines and the 
Trial of Minerals,' and, according to Ben Jonson, a 'Life of 
Queen EHzabeth' {Conversations with Drummond). 

Only three prose works by Ralegh were pubhshedin his Hfetime. 
The earliest was 'A Report of the Truth of the Fight about the 
Isles of Azores,' London (for William Ponsonby), 1591, anon, 
(reprinted under Ralegh's name by Hakluyt in 1595, and sepa- 
rately by Mr. Arber in 187 1). It was followed by the 'Discovery 
of the Emp3Te of Guiana' (London, by Robert Robinson), of 
which two editions appeared in 1596 (copies of both are in the 
British Museum) ; this was reprinted in Hakluyt, iii. (1598), and 
immediately translated into Dutch (Amsterdam, 1605) and into 
Latin (Nuremberg, 1599, and also in Hulsius's 'Collection'). 
The best edition is that published by the Hakluyt Society (1848), 
with introduction by Sir R. H. Schomburgk. 

The last work that Ralegh printed was his 'History of the 
World.' Begun for the benefit of Prince Henry, who died before 
its completion, it was executed while Ralegh was in the Tower, 
between, it is said, 1607 and 1614. During his imprisonment he 
extended his learning in all directions, but he did not know Hebrew, 
and when he could find no Latin translation of a Hebrew work, 
which he deemed it needful to consult, he borrowed ' the interpre- 
tation' of some learned friend. He thus derived occasional aid 
from Robert Burhill [q. v.], John Hoskins (1566-1638) [q. v.], 
and Harriot; but there is no good reason to doubt that most of 
the 660 authors which he cited were known to him at first hand. 
Ben Jonson, who regarded Ralegh as his 'father' in Hterature, 
claims to have revised the 'History' before it went to press, and 



THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH 365 

to have written 'a piece of the Punic War;' but even if Jonson's 
testimony be accepted, it does not justify Algernon Sidney's 
comment, in his 'Discourses on Government,' that Ralegh was 
'so well assisted than an ordinary man with the same helps 
might have performed the same thing.' In this view Isaac 
D'Israeli unwarrantably followed Sidney. But the insinuation 
that Ralegh borrowed his plumage rests on no just foundation. 

Ralegh's labours, which began with the creation, only reached 
to 130 B.C., the date of the conversion of Macedonia into a Roman 
province. He traced the rise and fall of the three great empires 
of Babylon, Assyria, and Macedon, and dealt exhaustively with 
the most flourishing periods of Jewish, Greek, and Roman history. 
As originally designed the work was to fill three volumes, and the 
published volume, consisting of five books, is called 'The First 
Part.' But Ralegh relinquished his task without doing more 
than amass a few notes for a continuation. In a desultory fashion 
he collected materials for an English section, and asked Sir Robert 
Cotton for works on British antiquities and 'any old French 
history wherein our nation is mentioned.' But the report that 
he completed a second volume, which he burnt, may be safely 
rejected. Winstanley, in his 'English Worthies,' 1660, who is 
copied by Aubrey, says that the publisher, Walter Burre, told 
Ralegh that the first part had failed to sell, whereupon Ralegh 
flung a second completed part into the fire. Another apocryphal 
anecdote (related in Robert Heron's 'Letters on Literature,' 1785, 
p. 213, and accepted by Carlyle) assigns the same act to Ralegh's 
despair of arriving at historic truth, after hearing a friend casually 
describe an incident that both had witnessed in terms that proved 
that it took in his friend's eyes a wholly different aspect from that 
which it took in his own. 

The work had so far advanced by 15 April 161 1 as to warrant the 
publisher, Walter Burre, in securing on that date a license for 
publication. 'Sir Walter Rawleighe' is mentioned as the author 
in the 'Stationers' Register' (Arber, iii. 357). It was pub- 
lished in 1 6 14 — Camden says on 29 March. In no extant copy 
of either of the two editions of 1614 is the author's name given, 
nor do they contain a title-page ; but there is a frontispiece elab- 
orately engraved by Reinold Elstracke, which is explained in 



366 SIDNEY LEE 

some anonymous verses ('The Mind of the Front*) by Ben 
Jonson. Of the two editions of 1614, the earlier supplies a list 
of errata, which are corrected in the later. 

The work attained an immediate popularity. Hampden, 
Cromwell, Bishop Hall, and Princess Elizabeth, the Electress 
Palatine, were among its earliest readers and admirers. James I 
alone condemned it. He complained that Ralegh had in his 
preface spoken irreverently of Henry VIII, and he believed he 
could detect his own features in Ralegh's portrait of Ninus, the 
effeminate successor of Queen Semiramis. On 22 Dec. 1614 the 
archbishop of Canterbury wrote asking the Stationers' Company, 
by direction of the king, to call in and suppress ' all copies of the 
book lately published by Sir Walter Rawleigh ' (Arber, Stationers^ 
Register, vol. v. p. Ixxvii). The reference is obviously to the 'His- 
tory of the World,' and not, as Mr. Gardiner assumed, to Ralegh's 
'Prerogative of Parliaments,' which was not begun before May 
1615. Chamberlain, the letter writer, declared, on 5 Jan. 1615- 
16, that the 'History' 'was called in by the king's command- 
ment for divers exceptions, but especially for being too saucy in 
censuring princes.' But the inhibition was apparently not per- 
sisted in. The book was permitted to continue in circulation after 
the publisher had contrived to cancel the title-page (Notes and 
Queries, 8th ser. v. 441-2). A second edition appeared in 
1617 (with a title-page bearing Ralegh's name); others, in folio, 
are dated 1621, 1624, 1628, 1634, 1652 (two), 1666, 1671, 1677 
(with a life by John Shirley), 1678, 1687, 1736 (the 'eleventh'). 
An octavo reprint appeared in 1820 at Edinburgh in 6 vols., and 
it fills vols, ii.-vii. of the Oxford edition of Ralegh's works of 
1829. 'Tubus Historicus, or Historical Perspective' (163 1), a 
summary of the fortunes of the four great ancient empires, is a 
bookmaker's compilation from it rather than, what it professes 
to be, an independent production of Ralegh's. An excerpt, en- 
titled ' Story of the War between the Carthaginians and their own 
mercenaries from Polybius,' was issued in 1657. Avowed abridg- 
ments, by Alexander Ross (called the 'Marrow of History') and 
by Lawrence Echard, are dated respectively 1650 and 1698. A 
brief continuation, by Ross, from 160 B.C. to a.d. 1640 appeared 
in 1652. 



THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH 367 

The design and style of Ralegh's 'History of the World' are 
instinct with a magnanimity which places the book among the 
noblest of literary enterprises. Throughout it breathes a serious 
moral purpose. It illustrates the sureness with which ruin over- 
takes 'great conquerors and other troublers of the world' who 
neglect law, whether human or divine, and it appropriately closes 
with an apostrophe to death of rarely paralleled sublimity. Ra- 
legh did not approach a study of history in a critical spirit, and 
his massive accumulations of facts have long been superannuated. 
But he showed an enhghtened appreciation of the need of studying 
geography together with history, and of chronological accuracy. 
His portraits of historical personages — Queen Jezebel, Deme- 
trius, Pyrrhus, Epaminondas — are painted to the Hfe ; and the 
frequent digressions in which he deals with events of his own day, 
or with philosophic questions of perennial interest, such as the 
origin of law, preserve for the work much of its original freshness. 
Remarks on the tactics of the armada, the capture of Fayal, the 
courage of Englishmen, the tenacity of Spaniards, England's re- 
lations with Ireland, emerge in the most unlikely surroundings, 
and are always couched in judicial and dignified language. His 
style, although often involved, is free from conceits. 

To Ralegh is also traditionally ascribed the history of the reign 
of WilHam I in Samuel Daniel's 'History of England' (16 18). 
This essay closely resembles 'An Introduction to the Breviary of 
the History of England with the reign of King William I, entitled 
the Conqueror,' which was printed in 1693 from a manuscript 
belonging to Archbishop Sancroft, who believed it to be by Ralegh. 
The authorship is not quite certain. 'A Discourse of Tenures 
which were before the Conquest,' by Ralegh, is printed in the 
Oxford edition of his works. 

Numerous essays by Ralegh on political themes were circulated 
in manuscript in his lifetime, and manuscript copies are to be found 
in many private and public collections. The following, which were 
published after his death, may be assigned to him with certainty : 
I. 'The Prerogative of Parliaments in England,' an argument, 
suggested by the proceedings against St. John in the Star-chamber 
in April 161 5, in favour of parliamentary institutions, though over- 
laid with so much conventional adulation of James I as to obscure 



368 SIDNEY LEE 

its real aim; 1628, 4to (title-pages are met with variously giving 
the place of publication as London, Hamburg, and Middleburg), 
dedicated to James I and the parHament; London, 1657, with a 
dedication to the parHament. 2. 'Advice to his Son,' London, 
1632, two editions; 1636 (a collection of sensible, if somewhat 
worldly, maxims). 3. 'The Prince, or Maxims of State, written 
by Sir Walter Rawley and presented to Prince Henry,' London, 
1642. 4. 'To-day a Man, To-morrow None,' London, 1644; 
containing the well-known letter to his wife. 5. 'The Arraigne- 
ment and Conviction of Sir Walter Rawleigh,' with a few letters, 
1648. 6. 'Judicious and Select Essays and Observations upon 
the first Invention of Shipping, the Misery of Invasive War, the 
Navy Royal, and Sea Service, with his Apology for his Voyage to 
Guiana,' London, 1650, and 1657. 7. A collection of tracts, 
including i, 2, and 3 above, with his 'Sceptick, an Apology for 
Doubt,' 'Observations concerning the Magnificency and Opu- 
lency of Cities,' an apocryphal 'Observations touching Trade 
and Commerce,' and 'Letters to divers persons of quality,' 
published with full list of contents on title-page in place of any 
general title in 165 1 and again in 1656 (with Vaughan's portrait); 
reissued in 1657, with the addition of 'The Seat of Government,' 
under the general title of 'Remaines.' 8. 'The Cabinet Council, 
or the Chief Arts of Empire discabinated. By that ever-renowned 
knight Sir Walter Rawleigh,' published by John Milton, 1658; 
reissued in same year as 'Chief Arts of Empire' (cf. Notes and 
Queries, 5th ser. iii. 302). 9. 'Three Discourses: (i.) of a War 
with Spain; (ii.) of the Cause of War; (iii.) of Ecclesiastical 
Power;' pubhshed by Philip Ralegh, his grandson, London, 1702. 
10. 'A Military Discourse, whether it would be better to give an 
invader battle or to temporise and defer the same,' pubhshed by 
Nath. Booth of Gray's Inn, 1734. 11. 'The Interest of England 
with regard to Foreign Alliances,' on the proposed marriage al- 
liances with Savoy, 1750. 

'A Relation of Cadiz Action in the year 1596,' first printed in 
Cayley's 'Life,' 1805, chap, v., reappears, with many other pre- 
viously unprinted pieces of smaller interest, including the meta- 
physical 'Treatise of the Soul,' in the only collective edition of 
Ralegh's works, Oxford, 1829, 8 vols. 8vo. 'Choice Passages 



THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH 369 

from the Writings and Letters of Sir Walter Raleigh' was edited 
by the Rev. Dr. Grosart in 1892. 

Some of the posthumous publications attributed to his pen are 
of doubtful authenticity. 'Observations touching Trade and 
Commerce with the Hollands and other Nations' (1650, and in 
'Remaines,' 1651) — an account of a scheme for diverting the 
Dutch carrying trade into English hands, which is repeated in 
McCulloch's 'Tracts,' 1859 — is more likely by John Keymer. 
*A Dialogue between a Jesuit and a Recusant in 1609,' 'The 
Life and Death of Mahomet' (1637), 'The Dutiful Advice of a 
loving Son to his aged Father' (in Oxford edit.), may be safely 
rejected as obvious imitations of Ralegh's style. Two volumes 
attributed to Ralegh by Sir Henry Sheeres [q. v.], their editor, 
and respectively entitled 'A Discourse on Sea Ports, principally 
on the Port and Haven of Dover,' 1 700-1 (reprinted in 'Harleian 
Miscellany') and 'An Essay on the Means to maintain the 
Honour and Safety of England,' 1701, are more probably by Sir 
Dudley Digges [q. v.]. 

The portraits of Ralegh are numerous. Among them is a 
full-length, probably by Zucchero, in the National Portrait Gal- 
lery, dated '1588 aetatis suae 34,' with a pair of compasses in the 
hand; another, in the Dublin Gallery, is assigned to the same 
artist ('ast. 44, 1598'); a third, with his son Walter (anon, dated 
1602), belongs to Sir John Farnaby Lennard, bart. (cf. Cat. 
Tudor Exhibition, 1890) : a fifth belongs to the Marquis of Bath 
(cf. Cat. National Portraits at South Kensington, 1866, 1868) ; 
a beautiful miniature at Belvoir Castle, inscribed 'aet. 65, 1618,' 
forms the frontispiece to Mr. Stebbing's 'Memoir,' 1891; and 
a portrait by Isaac Oliver is described in the 'Western Antiquary,* 
1881 (i. 126). There are engraved portraits by Simon Pass (pre- 
fixed to his 'History of the World,' 1621), by R. Vaughan 
(prefixed to his ' Maxims of State ' ), by Houbraken (in Birch's 
'Lives'), and by Vertue (prefixed to Oldys's 'Life,' 1735). 

The spelHng Ralegh (pronounced Rawley) is that which he 
adopted on his father's death in 1581, and persistently used after- 
wards. In April 1578 he signed 'Rauleygh' {Trans, of the Devon 
Assoc. XV. 174); from November 1578 {State Papers, Dom. cxxvi. 
46 i) till 1583 he signed 'Rauley.' His brother Carew signed 

2B 



370 



SIDNEY LEE 



'Raullygh' in 1578 and 'RauUigh' in 1588 (ih. ccxvi. 48 i). 
Mr. Stebbing gives (pp. 30-1) a list of about seventy other ways 
in which the name has been spelt. The form Raleigh he is not 
known to have employed. 

Lady Ralegh died in 1647. By her Ralegh had two sons, 
Walter and Carew. Walter, baptised at Lillington, Dorset, on 
I Nov. 1593, was probably born at Sherborne. He matriculated 
from Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on 30 Oct. 1607, and gradu- 
ated B. A. in 1610, his tutor being Dr. Daniel Fairclough, alias 
Featley, who describes him as addicted to 'strange company and 
violent exercises.' In 1613 Ben Jonson accompanied him as 
his governor or tutor to France. Jonson declares he was 'knav- 
ishly inclined,' and reports a humiliating practical joke which 
young Ralegh played on him {Conversations with Drummond^ 
p. 21). Attending his father in his latest expedition to Guiana, he 
was killed at San Tomas before 8 Jan. 161 7-18, when Cap- 
tain Kemys announced his death to his father. 

The second son Carew Ralegh (i 605-1 666), was born in the 
Tower of London and baptised at the church of St. Peter ad Vin- 
cula on 15 Feb. 1604-5; Richard Carew [q. v.] of Antonie 
was his godfather. In 16 19 he entered Wadham College, Oxford, 
as a fellow-comnioner, matriculated on 23 March 1620-1, and 
his name remained on the books until 1623 (Gardiner, Reg. Wad- 
ham Coll. Oxford). He is said to have written poetry while at 
Oxford. Wood saw some sonnets of his composition ; a poem by 
him beginning 'Careless of love and free from fears' was printed 
in Lawes's 'Ayres and Dialogues,' 1653 (p. 11). His distant 
kinsman William Herbert, third earl of Pembroke, brought him to 
court, but James I complained that he looked Hke his father's 
ghost, and, taking the hint, he spent a year in foreign travel. A 
bill restoring him in blood passed through the House of Lords in 
162 1 and through both houses of parliament in 1624, but James I 
withheld his assent, and, although it was submitted again in 1626, 
it did not receive the royal assent, till 1628, when it was made a 
condition that Ralegh should resign all claim to the Dorset estates 
{Lords Journals, vol. iii. passim; Commons^ Journals, i. 755 sq.). 
In other respects Charles I treated him considerately, and in 1635 
he became a gentleman of the privy chamber. In 1639 he was 



THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH 371 

sent to the Fleet prison for a week and suspended from his at- 
tendance at court for drawing his sword on a fellow-courtier (cf. 
Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep. p. 294). But he nominally remained 
in the king's service until the king's escape to the Isle of Wight in 
1645. According to Wood, Charles I 'honoured him with a kind 
token at his leaving Hampton Court' (cf. Lords^ Journals, vi. 186). 
He is said by Wood to have 'cringed afterwards to the men in 
power.' He had long set his heart on recovering his father's 
estates at Sherborne, and he presented to the House of Commons 
between 1648 and 1660 several petitions on the subject, one of 
which — largely autobiographical — was published in 1669 as 
'A brief Relation of Sir Walter Ralegh's Troubles' (reprinted 
in Harl. Misc. and in Somers Tracts; cf. Commons^ Journals, 
vi. 595, viii. 131 seq. ; Loj'ds' Journals, xi. 115 seq.). Wood chroni- 
cles a rumour that he defended his father's memory by writing 
'Observation upon some particular persons and passages [in 
William Sanderson's 'Compleat History'], written by a Lover of 
the Truth,' London, 1659, 4to. The pamphlet doubtless owed 
something to Carew's suggestions. He certainly expostulated 
with James Howell for expressing doubt in his 'Epistolae Hoeli- 
anae' of the existence of the mine in Guiana, and induced Howell 
to retract his suspicions in 1635 (cf. Epistolm Hoel. ed. Jacobs, ii. 
479 seq.). Meanwhile he took some active part in politics. He 
sat in parliament as member for Haselmere (1648-53) ; Carlyle is 
apparently in error in saying that he represented Callington in the 
closing years of the Long parliament (Notes and Queries, 6th ser. 
vol. xii. passim, 7th ser. vol. i. passim). In May 1650 he was 
committed to the Tower for a few days for ' passionate words ' 
spoken at a committee {Commons Journals, vi. 413, 416). On 
10 Aug. 1658 John Evelyn dined with him in his house at West 
Horsley (Evelyn, Diary, ii. 102). He took his place in the re- 
stored Rump parliament on 7 May 1659, and sat regularly till the 
members were expelled on 13 Oct. He was reinstated with his 
fellow-members on 26 Dec. and attended the house till the dis- 
solution in March (Masson, Milton, iv.). He zealously seconded 
Monck's efforts for the restoration, and through Monck's influence 
was appointed governor of Jersey on 29 Feb. 1659-60 (White- 
LOCKE, p. 697), but it is doubtful if he \isited the island. On 



372 SIDNEY LEE 

Charles IPs return he declined knighthood, and the honour was 
conferred upon his son Walter (15 June 1660). He owned prop- 
erty in Surrey; in 1629 the Earl of Southampton conveyed to him 
the manor of East Horsley, and he succeeded in 1643, on the death 
of his uncle Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, to the estate of West 
Horsley (Manning and Bray, Surrey, iii. 31; Brayley and 
Britten, Surrey, ii. 76). In December 1656 Ralegh settled the 
West Horsley property on his sons Walter and Philip, but the 
arrangement was voided by Walter's death, about 1663, and he 
sold the estate in 1665 to Sir Edward Nicholas for 9,750/. {Gent. 
Mag. 1790, i. 419)- Ralegh's London house was in St. Martin's 
Lane, and, dying there in 1666, he was buried on i Jan. 1666-7, 
in his father's grave in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster. The 
register describes him as 'kild,' which has been interpreted as 
murdered. By his will he made his widow sole executrix {Gent. 
Mag. 1850, ii. 368). He married Philippa (born Weston), 'the 
rich widow of Sir Anthony Ashley.' His son Philip, of London 
and Tenchley in Surrey, was stated in 1695 to have four sons (Wal- 
ter, Carew, and two others) and three daughters (Le Neve, 
Knights, p. 74) ; he edited in 1702 No. 9 in the list given above of 
his grandfather's tracts, and died in 1705. Carew's daughter 
Anne married Sir Philip Tyrell of Castlethorpe (Wood, Athence 
Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 244). 

The commonly repeated statement that Sir Walter Ralegh also 
left an illegitimate daughter rests apparently on a reference made 
by Ralegh 'to my poor daughter to whom I have given nothing,' 
in a letter which he is reputed to have addressed to his wife in July 
1603. 'Teach thy son,' he adds, 'to love her for his father's 
sake.' The letter, the genuineness of which is doubtful, was first 
printed in Bishop Goodman's 'Court of James I' (ed. Brewer, 
1839; cf. Edwards, ii. 383-387; Stebbing, pp. 195-8). 



THE LIFE OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 373 

THE LIFE OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 

SIDNEY LEE 

[From the Dictionary of National Biography.] 

Sidney, Sir Philip (1554-1586), soldier, statesman, and poet, 
born at Penshurst 30 Nov. 1554, was eldest son of Sir Henry 
Sidney [q. v.] by his wife Mary, daughter of John Dudley, duke 
of Northumberland. A tree still standing in Penshurst Park is 
identified with one which, according to Ben Jonson, 

Of a nut was set, 
At his great birth, where all the Muses met. 

His godfathers were PhiHp H of Spain, Queen Mary's husband, 
after whom he was named, and John Russell, first earl of Bedford 
[q. V.]. His godmother was his widowed grandmother, Jane, 
duchess of Northumberland. The child's infancy was apparently 
passed at Penshurst. When he was nine and a half his father, 
who was lord president of Wales, appointed him lay rector of the 
church of Whitford, Flintshire, of which the incumbent, Hugh 
Whitford, had just been deprived on account of his Roman 
Catholic leanings. On 8 May 1564 Gruff John, rector of Skyneog, 
acting as Philip's proctor, was duly admitted to the church and 
rectory of Whitford, and Philip thenceforth derived from the bene- 
fice an income of 60/. a year (cf. manuscripts at Penshurst). On 
16 Nov. 1564 he entered Shrewsbury school, of which Thomas 
Ashton was the master. Fulke Greville [q. v.] entered the school 
on the same day, and their friendship was only interrupted by 
death. 

Of Sidney's youth Greville wrote : ' I will report no other won- 
der than this, that, though I lived with him and knew him from 
a child, yet I never knew him other than a man ; with such staidness 
of mind, lovely and familiar gravity, as carried grace and reverence 
above greater years ; his talk ever of knowledge, and his very play 
tending to enrich his mind, so that even his teachers found some- 
thing in him to observe and learn above that which they had usually 
read or taught. Which eminence by nature and industry made his 



374 SIDNEY LEE 

worthy father style Sir Philip in my hearing, though I unseen, 
lumen familice sucb.' A grave demeanour accentuated through 
life his personal fascination. 

From his infancy PhiHp was a lover of learning. At the age 
of eleven he wrote letters to his father in both French and Latin, 
and Sir Henry sent him advice on the moral conduct of life, which 
might well have been addressed to one of maturer years. In 1568 
Philip left Shrewsbury for Christ Church, Oxford. There he 
continued to make rapid progress, and the circle of his admirers 
grew. His tutor, Thomas Thornton, left directions that the fact 
that Phihp had been his pupil should be recorded on his tomb- 
stone. His chief friends at Christ Church were Richard Carew 
[q. v.], Richard Hakluyt [q. v.], and WilHam Camden. But, as 
at Shrewsbury, his most constant companion was Greville, who 
joined Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College) at the same time 
as Philip went to Christ Church. His health was delicate, and 
his uncle, Leicester, who was chancellor of the university, wrote 
to Archbishop Parker soliciting a license to eat flesh during Lent 
in behalf of 'my boy Phihp Sidney, who is somewhat subject to 
sickness.' On 2 Aug. 1568 Sir Henry visited his son at Oxford, 
and took him back with him to Ludlow. On the road they turned 
aside to inspect Leicester's castle of Kenilworth. 

An earlier introduction of the boy to Sir WiUiam Cecil had in- 
spired that statesman with an active interest in his welfare. Writ- 
ing to his father on 9 Aug. 1568, Cecil sent his remembrances to 
'the darhng Phihp.' On 3 Sept. Cecil wrote reproaching Sir 
Henry for having carried away 'your son and my scholar from 
Oxford. ' Phihp spent his holidays at the end of the year with the 
Cecils at Hampton Court. 'He is worthy to be loved,' wrote 
Cecil to his father, 'and so I do love him as he were my own' 
(5 Jan. 1569). Sir Henry took practical advantage of the affection 
which his son inspired in the great statesman by proposing that a 
marriage should be arranged between Philip and Cecil's elder 
daughter, Anne, who was two years the lad's junior. Cecil po- 
litely hinted in reply that his daughter, who was only thirteen, 
must seek a richer suitor. Sir Henry anxiously pressed the negotia- 
tion. He or his brother-in-law, the Earl of Leicester, who heartily 
approved the match, undertook to provide Phihp with an income 



THE LIFE OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 375 

of 266/. 135. ^d. on the day of his marriage, with a reversion to a 
fixed income of 840/. 45. 2d. and other sums on the death of his 
parents. Cecil soon agreed to pay down 1,000/. and to leave his 
daughter an annuity of 66/. 135. 4^ A marriage settlement was 
drafted on these lines, but Sir Henry mislaid it when it was sent to 
him to Ireland for signature, and, although on 24 Feb. 1570 Sir 
Henry wrote to Cecil that he would not wish the match broken off, 
even if his son were offered 'the hand of the greatest prince's 
daughter in chrysendom,' the scheme fell through. Philip often 
wrote to Cecil while the marriage negotiations were in progress, 
and expressed anxiety to stand high in his estimation, but no ref- 
erence was made to Anne, and it is obvious that the boy and girl 
were not consulted. Cecil arranged next year for Anne's marriage 
with Edward Vere, seventeenth earl of Oxford [q. v.]. On 26 Oct. 
1573 it was suggested that both Philip and his brother Robert 
should be married to daughters of the twelfth Lord Berkeley, but 
the suggestion was not seriously entertained. 

Early in 1571 the plague raged at Oxford, and Philip left the 
university, not to return. He took no degree. The next few 
months seem to have been spent partly at Ludlow with his family, 
partly at Kenilworth with his uncle Leicester, and partly at Pens- 
hurst, but he contrived to pay frequent visits to the court. In 
May 1572 he received the queen's license to undertake a two years' 
visit to the continent 'for his attaining the knowledge of foreign 
languages.' Leicester, in a letter of introduction forwarded to 
Francis Walsingham, the English ambassador at Paris, described 
his nephew as 'young and raw.' PhiHp left London on 26 May 
in the suite of the Earl of Lincoln, who was proceeding to the 
French court to negotiate a marriage between Queen Elizabeth 
and the Due d'Alen^on. He remained in Paris for nearly three 
months, residing at the EngHsh embassy. Walsingham intro- 
duced him to the leaders of French society, and Charles IX, king 
of France, gave him a cordial welcome, bestowing on him the title 
of baron and appointing him gentleman in ordinary of the royal 
bedchamber. With the rehgious sentiments of the Huguenots 
he was already in deep sympathy, and he was soon on terms of 
close intimacy with their leaders. Henry of Navarre treated him 
as a friend and equal, and Philip was doubtless present on 18 Aug. 



376 SIDNEY LEE 

at Henry's marriage in Notre Dame with Margaret, the king's 
sister. There followed on 23 Aug., on the eve of St. Bartholomew's 
day, the great massacre of the protestants. Sidney enjoyed the 
protection of the English embassy, and ran no personal risk, but 
on 9 Sept. 1572, when the news of the great crime reached the 
English privy council, Burghley and Leicester at once despatched 
orders to Walsingham to procure passports for Sidney so that he 
might at once leave the country. In charge of Dr. Watson he 
set out for Lorraine, whence he passed to Strasburg and afterwards 
down the Rhine through Heidelberg to Frankfort. Between 
March and June 1573 he lodged at Frankfort with Andrew Wechel, 
a learned printer. 

In the same house there was living Hubert Languet, the learned 
protestant controversialist and scholar. Languet was fifty-four 
years old, but similarity of tastes and views attracted him to the 
young traveller, and there sprang up between them a lasting 
friendship. To Languet's influence Sidney attributed practically 
all his knowledge of literature and reHgion. In the ^Arcadia' 
Sidney recalled how Languet's ^good strong staff ' his 'slippery 
years upbore.' In the summer of 1573 Sidney accompanied 
Languet to Vienna, and visited the court of the Emperor Maxi- 
milian II. In August he left Vienna ostensibly to make a three 
days' journey to Presburg, but he remained in Hungary more than 
a month. After returning for a few weeks to Vienna in October, 
he left Languet to make an extended tour in Italy. On parting 
they agreed to correspond with each other every week. The older 
man seems to have kept the bargain more faithfully than the 
younger, but many interesting letters from Sidney survive. Sir 
Thomas Coningsby [q. v.], Lodowick or Lewis Bryskett [q. v.], 
and Griffin Madox, a faithful servant, bore him company in Italy. 
Most of his time was spent at Venice, where the council of ten 
granted him a license to bear arms in all parts of the repubhc's 
dominions. Arnaud du Ferrier, the French ambassador, and 
Count Philip Lewis of Hanau, a visitor like himself, showed him 
many attentions. He came to know the painters Tintoretto and 
Paolo Veronese, and he enjoyed the magnificent hospitality 
of the Venetian merchants. At Venice he also continued his 
studies, learning astronomy and music, and reading history and 



THE LIFE OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 



\11 



current Italian literature. Languet sent him valuable advice, 
urging him to form his Latin style on Cicero's letters, and not to 
absorb himself in astronomy and geometry. Such services tended 
to gravity, of which Sidney already possessed abundance. 'lam 
more sober,' Sidney admitted in reply, Hhan my age or business 
requires.' During the early months of 1574 Sidney visited Genoa, 
and spent several weeks at Padua. In February he sat to Paolo 
Veronese for his portrait (now lost) which was sent as a gift to 
Languet. Languet thought the expression ' too sad and thought- 
ful.' 

During the latter part of Sidney's stay in Venice, politics chiefly 
occupied him. He sent letters to Leicester full of enthusiasm for 
the protestant cause. At Nimeguen on 15 April 1574 Count 
Lewis of Nassau (brother of William of Orange), whom Sidney had 
met both at Paris and Frankfort, was killed in battle with the Span- 
iards, and the sad incident filled Sidney with fears for the future 
of protestantism. In July 1574 Sidney, whose health was still 
weak, fell seriously ill from drinking too much water, it was 
thought. He long felt the effects of the illness. 

At the end of July Sidney left Italy to revisit Languet at Vienna, 
and he accompanied him to Poland. There he is said to have 
received and to have rejected a suggestion that he should offer him- 
self as a candidate for the throne which Henry of Valois had 
vacated in June on succeeding to the crown of France. In De- 
cember he sent to Lord Burghley from Vienna a survey of politics 
in the east of Europe, and he was apparently entrusted during the 
winter with some diplomatic duties as secretary of legation, jointly 
with Edward Wotton. Together they learnt horsemanship from 
John Peter Pugliano, esquire of the emperor's stables, and Sidney 
gave a vivid account in the opening passage of his 'Apologie for 
Poetrie' of PugHano's enthusiasm for soldiers and horses. At the 
end of February 1575 Sidney rode in the train of the emperor from 
Vienna to Prague, whither the emperor went to preside over the 
Bohemian diet. While still at Prague, early in March, Sidney 
received a summons to return home. Reports had been circulated 
that he had become a cathoHc, but Languet proved in a letter to 
Walsingham, now secretary of state, the absurdity of the rumour. 
Sidney travelled by way of Dresden, Heidelberg, Strasburg, Frank- 



378 SIDNEY LEE 

fort, and Antwerp, reaching London early in June 1575. He 
visited or was visited by many learned men on the way. Zacharias 
Ursinus, the protestant controversiaHst, and Henri Estienne 
(Stephanus), the classical printer, who dedicated to Sidney his edi- 
tion of Herodian in 1581, met him at Heidelberg. Languet spent 
some time with him at Frankfort ( Janson, De Vitis Stephanorum, 
Amsterdam, 1683, p. 67). 

Settled again in England, Sidney frequented the court, where 
his uncle Leicester was anxious to advance his interests. Walsing- 
ham also gave him a kindly welcome, and the queen received him 
favourably. In July 1576 he was present at the ornate festivities 
with which Leicester entertained his sovereign at Kenilworth. 
Thence he removed with the court to Chartley Castle, the seat of 
Walter Devereux, first earl of Essex [q. v.]. His charm of manner 
at once captivated the earl. At Chartley, too, he probably first 
met the earl's daughter Penelope, then a girl twelve years old, who 
some years later was to excite in him an overmastering passion. 
Now Philip had other troubles. His pecuniary position was un- 
satisfactory. In August 1575 he gave a bond for 42/. 6s. to Richard 
Rodway, a London tailor, and later he sent a boot bill for 4/. 105. 
4^. to his father's steward with a request that he would meet it. 
In the winter of 1576 he was staying at his uncle's house in London, 
and was improving his acquaintance with Essex, whose guest he 
often was at Durham House. Essex saw in him a promising 
suitor for his daughter Penelope. In July Essex travelled to Ire- 
land to take up his appointment as earl marshal. Philip went 
with him in order to pay a visit to his father, who was then lord 
deputy. Father and son met at Dublin, and in September travelled 
together to Athlone and Galway, where Philip saw much of the 
difficulties of Irish government. On 2 1 Sept. his new friend, Essex, 
died at DubHn. Almost his last words were of his admiration for 
Philip : '■ I wish him well — so well that, if God move their hearts, 
I wish that he might match with my daughter. I call him son — 
he is so wise, virtuous, and godly. If he go on in the course he 
hath begun, he will be as famous and worthy a gentleman as ever 
England bred.' The earl's secretary, Edward Waterhouse [q. v.], 
wrote to Sir Henry Sidney on 14 Nov. that his late master anxiously 
desired Philip's marriage with the Lady Penelope, and spoke of the 



THE LIFE OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 379 

dishonour that would attend a breach of the engagement {Sydney 
Papers, i. 147). 

PhiHp was a serious youth of two-and-twenty, and the girl a 
coquette of fourteen. They were thenceforth often in each other's 
society, and he began addressing to her the series of sonnets in 
which he called himself Astrophel and the lady Stella. But it 
would appear that Sidney's relations with Penelope very slowly 
passed beyond the bounds of friendship. At the outset, his sonnets 
were, in all probability, mere literary exercises designed in emula- 
tion of those addressed by the Earl of Surrey to Geraldine, which 
were themselves inspired by Petrarch's sonnets to Laura ; Surrey's 
'lyrics' are eulogised by Sidney in his 'Apologie for Poetrie' 
(p. 51). Neither his nor Penelope's friends regarded their union 
with serious favour, while some references in Philip's correspond- 
ence with Languet during 1578 suggest that he had no immediate 
intention of submitting to the restraints of matrimony. In such 
sonnets as can be assigned on internal evidence to an early date, 
Sidney confined himself to calm eulogies of Penelope's beauty. 
When a deeper note was sounded, Stella had become another's 
wife [see Rich, Penelope, Lady Rich], and it was her marriage 
in 1 58 1 that seems to have first stirred in Sidney a genuine and 
barely controllable passion. 

PubHc affairs absorbed too much of his interest to render him 
an easy prey to women's blandishments. Early in 1577 he was 
directed to convey Elizabeth's messages of condolence and con- 
gratulation to the Elector Palatine Lewis at Heidelberg, and to 
the Emperor Rudolf II at Prague. Both princes had just suc- 
ceeded to their thrones on the death of their fathers. His friend 
Fulke Greville accompanied him, and Sir Henry Lee and Sir 
Jerome Bowes were members of his suite. Permission was granted 
him to confer with the rulers whom he met abroad about the wel- 
fare of the reformed religion and of civil liberty. Arrived in the 
Low Countries, Sidney paid his respects at Louvain to Don John 
of Austria, the Spanish general, who showed him every civility. 
While awaiting in the middle of March the arrival of the Lutheran 
Elector Lewis at Heidelberg, he had much friendly intercourse with 
the elector's brother, John Casimir, a bigoted Calvinist. His in- 
structions ordered him to urge a reconciliation between the Luther- 



380 SIDNEY LEE 

ans and Calvinists of the Palatinate, and to demand certain sums 
of money which Queen Elizabeth had lent the late elector. In 
neither negotiation did he make much progress. He left Heidel- 
berg while the Elector Lewis was still absent, and on Easter Mon- 
day he presented his credentials to the emperor at Prague. In defi- 
ance alike of his instructions and of diplomatic etiquette, he recom- 
mended the emperor, in an impassioned oration, to form a league 
of nations against the tyrannies of Spain and Rome • — an appeal 
which the emperor naturally ignored. At Prague, Sidney paid a 
visit of condolence to the widow of the late Emperor Maximilian, 
and to his daughter, the widow of the French king, Charles IX; 
but he passed most of his time with Languet and his friends. On 
the return journey in April, Languet accompanied Sidney to 
Neustadt, where he met the Elector Lewis, and begged him to 
bring the strife between the Lutherans and Calvinists in his domin- 
ions to a close. He visited the Landgrave William of Hesse; 
but of all the princes and statesmen whom he interviewed, only 
John Casimir expressed approval of his project of a protestant 
league. At Cologne Languet left him, and, in conformity with 
new instructions and his own wishes, he turned aside from Antwerp 
to offer Queen Elizabeth's congratulations to William of Orange 
on the birth of a son. William received him with enthusiasm at 
Dordrecht, and invited him to stand godfather at the boy's bap- 
tism. Sidney left on William of Orange the best possible impres- 
sion. The prince subsequently declared that her majesty had 
in Sidney one of the ripest and greatest counsellors of state that 
lived in Europe (Greville, p. 31). Very early in June Sidney 
arrived at the court at Greenwich, and on the 9th Walsingham 
wrote to Philip^s father in Ireland: 'There hath not been any 
gentleman, I am sure, these many years that hath gone through so 
honourable a charge with as great commendations as he.' 

On 21 April 1577 Philip's sister Mary had married Henry 
Herbert, second earl of Pembroke [q. v.], and in July he hurried 
down to his sister's new home at Wilton to pay her the first of 
many visits there. But he soon returned to court in order to use 
his influence with the queen against those who were poisoning her 
mind as to his father's conduct of the Irish government. When 
the Earl of Ormonde, who had steadily resisted Sir Henry Sidney 



THE LIFE OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 38 1 

in Dublin, arrived on a visit to the queen, Philip was anxious to 
incite him to a personal encounter. In September he drew up 
an elaborate treatise, for the queen's perusal, in defence of his 
father's Irish policy (in Brit. Mus. Cotton MSS. Titus B. xii. fit. 
557-9). It was divided into seven sections, of which the first three 
are missing, but enough survives to attest Philip's masterly grasp 
of the most difficult problem that confronted English statesmen. 
He proved his father's wisdom in levying taxation equally on the 
great Anglo-Irish nobles, the poorer settlers, and the native popu- 
lation, and attributed the frequency of disturbance to the unreason- 
able and arrogant pretensions of the nobility. For the moment 
the queen was pacified by his arguments, and Sir Henry enjoyed 
a few months' peace. 

Philip's position at court was growing steadily in influence and 
dignity. In the summer of 1577 he entertained Philip du Plessis 
Mornay, an envoy from the French protestants, who brought an 
introduction to him from Languet. When in June 1578 Mornay 
and his wife paid a second visit to England, Philip stood godfather 
to an infant daughter who was born during the parents' visit. 
On new year's day 1578 he presented the queen not only with a 
cambric smock, the sleeves and collar wrought in black and edged 
with gold and silver lace, but also with a pair of ruffs laced with 
gold and silver, and set with spangles that weighed four ounces. 
The queen sent him in return gilt plate weighing twenty-two 
ounces. When the queen visited Leicester on the following 
May-day at Wanstead, Philip turned his literary gifts to account, 
and prepared a fantastic masque in her honour entitled 'The 
Lady of May.' 

Philip's wide intellectual interests led him at the same time to 
extend the circle of his friends beyond the limits of the court. 
'There was not,' wrote Greville, 'an approved painter, skilful 
engineer, excellent musician, or any other artificer of fame that 
made not himself known to him.' But it was with men of letters 
that he found himself in fullest sympathy. When, in July 1578, 
representatives of Cambridge University waited on the queen, 
while she was staying at Audley End (near Saffron Walden), 
Gabriel Harvey [q. v. , who was a member of the deputation, met 
Sidney, who was in attendance on Elizabeth. That eccentric 



382 SIDNEY LEE 

scholar at once fell under the sway of his fascination, and in his 
' Gratulationes Valdinenses' which celebrated the royal visit he 
included an enthusiastic Latin eulogy of his new friend. It was 
doubtless Harvey who recommended his pupil Edmund Spenser 
to Sidney's notice, and to the notice of Sidney's uncle, Leicester. 
At the end of 1578 Spenser was Leicester's guest in London at 
Leicester House, and there Sidney frequently met him. Sir 
Edward Dyer [q. v.], a court acquaintance of Sidney, shared his 
affection for literature, and he, too, spent much time with Spenser 
at Leicester House. On 16 Oct. 1579 the poet wrote to Harvey: 
'The two worthy gentlemen, Mr. Sidney and Mr. Dyer, have 
me, I thank them, at some use in familiarity' (cf. Gabriel 
Harvey's Letterbook, Camden Soc. p. loi). Spenser's devotion 
to Sidney is not the least interesting testimony to the latter's ver- 
satile culture. Spenser subsequently recalled 

Remembrance of that most heroic spirit 
Who first my muse did lift out of the floor 
To sing his sweet delights in lowly lays. 

Among the complimentary verses prefixed to the first edition of the 
'Faerie Queen' in 1590 were some by 'W. L.,' which reiterate 
Sidney's abiding influence on Spenser's Hterary development. 
At the end of 1579 Spenser dedicated to Sidney, whom he de- 
scribed as 'the president of nobless and of chivalry,' his 'Shep- 
herd's Calendar;' and the editor of the volume, Edward Kirke 
[q. v.], wrote of Sidney as 'a special favourer and maintainer of 
all kinds of learning.' With a view to converting Sidney and his 
friends to his own theories of the need of naturalising the classical 
metres in English verse, Harvey persuaded them to form a literary 
society which they called the Areopagus, and they seem to have 
often met in London during 1579 to engage in formal literary 
debate. Under these influences Sidney attempted many sapphics 
and hexameters in English, some of which he incorporated in the 
'Arcadia.' He commemorated such intercourse with literary 
friends in a poem 'upon his meeting with his two worthy friends 
and fellow-poets,' Dyer and Greville (Davison's Poetical Rhap- 
sody, ed. BuUen, i. 32). 

The drama also attracted Sidney, and he interested himself in the 



THE LIFE OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 383 

welfare of his uncle Leicester's company of players. In 1582 he 
stood godfather to the son of Richard Tarleton, who was a member 
of the company. When, in 1579, Stephen Gosson [q. v.] without 
authority dedicated to him his denunciation of playhouses, which 
he entitled ' The Schoole of Abuse,' Sidney circulated an en- 
lightened defence of the drama in his 'Apologie for Poetrie.' 
To him, as the avowed champion of the stage, Thomas Lodge 
subsequently dedicated his 'Alarum against Usurers ' (1584). 

Meanwhile in the summer of 1578 Sidney received some small 
office about the court, and at Christmas welcomed his friend 
Languet, who accompanied Prince John Casimir on a visit to 
EHzabeth. Languet reproached Sidney with inhaling too freely 
the somewhat enervating atmosphere of the court. But Sidney's 
independence of character unfitted him for the permanent role 
of courtier. During the summer of 1579 he was often absent while 
superintending on behalf of his father the enlargement of Pens- 
hurst, and in August he experienced the fickleness of the favour 
of the queen, who extended to him the anger with which she re- 
ceived the news of Leicester's secret marriage with the Countess 
of Essex. In September Sidney was forced into a personal quarrel 
which gave him a further distaste for court life. While he was 
playing tennis at Whitehall, the Earl of Oxford came in uninvited 
and joined in the game. Sidney politely raised objections. The 
earl bade all the players leave the court, and when Sidney protested 
the earl called him a puppy. Sidney gave him the lie direct. 
'Puppies,' he quietly retorted, 'are gotten by dogs, and children 
by men.' But the earl ignored the insult, and it was left to Sidney 
to send him a challenge. The dispute reached the queen's ears, 
and she forbade a duel ; but Sidney decHned to act upon the queen's 
suggestion that he owed the earl an apology on the ground of his 
superior rank. Early in January 1580 he incurred the queen's 
wrath anew. He sent her an elaborate treatise condemning her 
proposed marriage with the Duke of Anjou. It was a vehemently 
worded appeal to the queen's patriotism and protestant zeal 
{Sydney Papers, i. 287-92). For some months Sidney was excluded 
from her presence. Retiring to Wilton, or, according to Aubrey, 
to the neighbouring village of Ivychurch, he engaged with his 
sister in Hterary work. Jointly they versified the psalms, and for 



384 SIDNEY LEE 

her amusement he wrote his 'Arcadia,' a romance in prose with 
interludes of verse. To the same period may doubtless be referred 
his poem in 'dispraise of a courtly life' (Davison, Poetical 
Rhapsody, ed. Bullen, i. 34). 

On 18 Oct. 1580 Sidney was at Leicester House, and thence 
addressed to his younger brother Robert, who was travelling 
abroad, an elaborate letter of counsel, in which he sketched a 
sensible method of studying history {Sydney Papers, i. 283-5; 
reprinted in Profitable Instructions for Travellers, 1633). At the 
end of October Sidney had returned to court, apparently after 
promising to abstain from protests against the French marriage. 
Money was still scarce with him, and, with a view to increasing 
his narrow resources, his uncle Leicester procured for him at the 
end of 1580 the stewardship to the bishopric of Winchester. Sub- 
sequently he begged Lord Burghley to induce the queen to grant 
him 100/. a year out of property seized from the papists (10 Oct. 
1581). He was able on new year's day 1581 to present the queen 
with a gold-headed whip, a chain of gold, and a heart of gold. 
On 16 Jan. he was returned at a by-election, in place of his father, 
to Queen Elizabeth's fourth parliament as M. P. for Kent, but the 
only part he is known to have taken at the time in the proceedings 
of the House of Commons was as a member of the committee which 
recommended stringent measures against catholics and slanderers 
of the queen. On 3 May 1581 Don Antonio, the claimant to the 
throne of Portugal, addressed to his 'illustrious nephew Philip 
Sidney' an appeal for help in his hopeless struggle with Philip II 
of Spain {Sydney Papers, i. 294). On Whit Monday and Whit 
Tuesday, 15 and 16 May, Sidney distinguished himself as a chief 
performer in an elaborate tournament which was held at White^ 
hall in honour of an embassy from France. He was at Wilton at 
Christmas 1581 while the Duke of Anjou was on a visit to Eliza- 
beth in London. But in February 1582, with his uncle and other 
courtiers, he escorted the duke on leaving London to Antwerp, 
where he mourned anew the death of his old friend Languet, who 
had died in that city on 30 Sept. 1581. 

In August 1582, when Sir Henry was invited to resume the office 
of lord deputy of Ireland, he assented to the proposal on the con- 
dition that Philip accompanied him, but the proposal was not 



THE LIFE OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 385 

seriously entertained. At the time Philip was in Wales. Later in 
the year he wrote from Wilton to ask his uncle Leicester's per- 
mission to stay there over Christmas. On 13 Jan. 1583 he was 
knighted, but the honour was not conferred on him in recognition 
of his personal merits. Prince John Casimir had chosen Sidney 
to represent him at his installation by proxy as knight of the Garter, 
and etiquette prescribed that a knight of the Garter's proxy must 
not be of lower rank than a knight-bachelor. He was still in need 
of a settled appointment and a settled income ; and soon afterwards 
it was agreed to associate Sidney with his uncle Warwick in the 
mastership of the ordnance. Thenceforth he frequently assisted 
his uncle, but the letters patent formally appointing him joint- 
master of the ordnance with Warwick were not issued, owing to 
the queen's vacillation, till 21 July 1585. In 1583, too, he was an 
unsuccessful candidate for the office of captain of the Isle of Wight, 
but military dignity was during the year bestowed on him by his 
nomination as 'general of horse;' and he was granted some por- 
tion of the fines paid by clerical recusants. 

The need of money was the more pressing in that Walsingham 
had proposed to Sir Henry Sidney early in 1583 that Philip should 
marry his daughter Frances. Sir Henry highly approved the 
proposal, but deplored his 'present biting necessity,' which would 
not allow him to make any satisfactory pecuniary settlement. 
Of Philip's devotion to the girl, who was only fourteen, the parents 
of both felt assured. Lady Penelope Devereux had married Lord 
Rich in 1581. Philip had never ceased writing sonnets to her, 
and those that seem assignable to the period when his own mar- 
riage was under consideration are more passionate, if more des- 
perate, in tone than before. It is therefore improbable that the 
match with Walsingham's daughter was of his own making. 
Nevertheless, he readily acceded to the wishes of his own and of 
the lady's parents. The queen at first refused to countenance the 
engagement, but after two months' debate with Walsingham she 
'passed over the offence,' and the courtship proceeded without 
hindrance. The marriage was celebrated on 20 Sept. 1583, and 
the young couple took up their residence with the bride's parents, 
who divided their time between Walsingham House in London 
and the manor-house at Barn Elms, Surrey. Sidney's relations 

2C 



386 SIDNEY LEE 

with Lady Rich were not apparently interrupted, but he stirred 
in his wife a genuine affection, and the union contributed to their 
mutual happiness. 

Routine duties at court or in the department of the ordnance 
combined with literary study to occupy Sidney during the first 
months of his married life. Early in 1584 he frequently met, at 
the house of Fulke Greville, Giordano Bruno, the Italian phi- 
losopher, who had arrived in England on a visit to the French am- 
bassador, M. Castelnau de Mauvissiere. Sidney's fame had 
reached Bruno at Milan as early as 1579. At Greville's house 
they discussed together 'moral, metaphysical, mathematical, 
and natural speculations.' On 13 Feb. 1584 the Italian stated 
to his English friends 'the reasons of his belief that the earth 
moves.' Bruno dedicated two books to Sidney, 'Spaccio de la 
BestiaTrionfante' (1584), and the poetic 'Degli Heroici Furori' 
(1585). But Sidney evinced little sympathy with Bruno's 
scepticism in matters of religion. At the same time as he was 
debating science and philosophy with him, he was translating 
from the French of his protestant friend, Philip du Plessis Mornay, 
'a work concerning the trueness of the Christian religion.' In 
October 1584 he went to Wilton to stand godfather to Philip, his 
sister's second son, and before the year was at an end he wrote a 
spirited defence of his uncle Leicester against the savage libel that 
was popularly known as 'Leicester's Commonwealth.' Sidney, 
who at the close of his tract dared the anonymous libeller to defend 
his allegations with the sword, apparently wrote with a view to 
publication, but the tract remained in manuscript until it was 
printed in ColHns's 'Sydney Papers' in 1746 (i. 62-8). 

But Sidney's marriage did not abate his anxiety for more active 
employment. Despairing of the queen's intervention in the affairs 
of the Low Countries, he contemplated taking some part in the 
colonisation of North America. Philip had long shown much 
interest in the enterprise. When, in June 1575, the Earl of War- 
wick, his uncle, was fitting out Martin Frobisher's expedition 
in search of the North- West Passage, Philip took up at first a 25/. 
share, and afterwards a 50/. share. In his correspondence with 
Languet he described Frobisher's adventures with enthusiasm, 
and he estimated at a recklessly high rate the value of the metal 



THE LIFE OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY ■ 387 

Frobisher brought back from Meta Incognita. In 1582 his old 
college friend, Richard Hakluyt, dedicated to him the first edition 
of his 'Voyages.' In 1583 Philip wrote to his friend, Sir Edward 
Stafford [q. v.], that he was half persuaded to join in the expedition 
to Newfoundland, under Sir Humphrey Gilbert, which ended in 
disaster. Meanwhile letters patent were issued to him authorising 
him to discover new land in America, and to hold for ever 'such 
and so much quantity of ground as should amount to the number 
of thirty hundred thousand acres.' He does not seem to have 
intended to personally conduct the expedition, and in July 1583 
made over to Sir George Peckham the right to thirty thousand of 
the three million acres assigned to him. Through 1584 Sidney 
watched with interest Ralegh's designs on America, and in De- 
cember, after he had been re-elected to serve as M.P. for Kent, 
he sat on a committee of the House of Commons which defined 
the boundaries of the projected colony of Virginia. He recom- 
mended in February 1585 the appointment of Ralph Lane as the 
first governor, and some of the letters which Lane wrote to Sidney 
the former incorporated in his account of Virginia. 

In the autumn of 1 584 the queen chose Sidney to carry her con- 
dolences to Henri III of France on the death of his brother, the 
Duke of Anjou. The duty could hardly have been congenial, 
and before Sidney started the news of the murder of his friend and 
admirer, William of Orange, seemed to jeopardise the position of 
protestantism ^throughout Europe. Sidney received instructions 
to sound the French king as to his willingness to oppose the prog- 
ress of the Spaniards in the Low Countries. But the embassy 
proved of no effect. The French king was at Lyons when Sidney 
reached Paris, and he sent him word that he would not return for 
two months. Sidney therefore came home, more firmly con- 
vinced than before of the duty of England actively to resist the 
aggressions of Spain. With masterly insight into the situation, he 
argued that Spain should be challenged in her own citadels; and 
that her advance in Flanders, where her armies were admirably 
equipped to meet her enemies, should be checked by raids of Eng- 
lish ships on seaports of the Spanish peninsula, and on her trade 
with South America. But the queen hesitated, and Sidney con- 
centrated all his energy on endeavours to overcome her indifference. 



388 • SIDNEY LEE 

During the winter of 1584-5 he regularly attended the debates in 
the House of Commons, and vehemently supported the proposed 
penal legislation against the Jesuits. Outside parliament he inter- 
vened in the pending negotiations with James VI of Scotland, and 
used all his influence to detach that monarch from the cause of his 
catholic mother and from alliance with Spain. He was in repeated 
communication with the Scottish envoy in London, the Master 
of Gray, who was attracted by his personal charm, afld appeared 
to follow his advice. Sidney did not detect the double game which 
the astute ambassador was playing. 

At length, in June 1585, the queen agreed to send an army to 
the Low Countries to support the cause of the protestants. Sidney 
was still convinced that a direct attack on Spain was the wiser 
course. But, wherever the blow was to be struck, he was anxious 
to lend a hand. There seemed much doubt whether any command 
would be offered him in the Low Countries, and, holding aloof 
from the discussions which the queen's change of policy excited 
in court circles, he actively interested himself during the summer in 
the great expedition to the Spanish coast which Drake was fitting 
out at Plymouth. He knew well that he could not obtain the 
queen's assent to take part in that enterprise, but he made up his 
mind to join it without inviting the royal permission. In August 
he hurried secretly to Plymouth, whence Drake's fleet was ready 
to set sail. But Drake understood the situation, and declined 
to risk the queen's anger. He informed the court of Sidney's 
plans, and the queen's imperious summons to Sidney to present 
himself at court proved irresistible. On 2 1 Sept. he made his peace 
with the queen at Nonsuch, and on 7 Nov. she signed at West- 
minster a patent appointing him governor of Flushing, one of the 
towns which the States- General had surrendered to her as security 
for the aid she was rendering them. At the same time Leicester 
was nominated commander-in-chief of the queen's forces in the 
Low Countries. 

On 16 Nov. Sidney left Gravesend to take up his command at 
Flushing, where he arrived two days later. He found the garrison 
weak and dispirited, and set about strengthening the defences. 
On 10 Dec. Leicester joined him, and passed on to the Hague 
amid much popular rejoicing. The Spaniards, who had held 



THE LIFE OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 389 

Antwerp since 17 Aug., were in formidable strength, and Sidney 
soon realised the difficulties of the position of himself and his 
fellow-countrymen. Supplies were slow in coming from England. 
The Dutch allies were listless or suspicious, and Leicester was soon 
involved in a quarrel with the queen, in which he had Sidney's 
full sympathy. But Sidney did what he could to prevent the dis- 
pute from wholly diverting Leicester's attention from the perils 
of the immediate situation. Repeatedly did he hurry to the Hague 
to urge on his uncle and on the Dutch government the necessity, 
at all hazards, of immediate and resolute action in the field. But 
disappointments accumulated. When, in February 1586, Sidney 
was appointed by Leicester colonel of the Zeeland regiment of 
horse, a rival candidate, Count Hohenlohe, protested against the 
promotion of a foreigner, and the queen judged the count's griev- 
ance just. To Lord Burghley and to his father-in-law Sidney sent 
vehement appeals to rouse the queen to a fuller sense of her 
responsibilities. At any rate, he pointed out, it was a point of 
honour for her to equip the army with the supplies requisite for 
the work that awaited it. 'I understand I am called ambitious 
and proud at home,' he protested to Walsingham; 'but certainly, 
if they knew my heart, they would not altogether so judge me.' 
At the end of March his wife joined him at Flushing, and soon after 
he learnt there of his father's death on 6 May, and of his mother's 
death on 1 1 Aug. Leicester did not encourage him to take service 
in the field. Nevertheless, on 6-7 July Sidney, with his friend 
Prince Maurice, effected a raid on Axel, a village in the Spaniards' 
hands only twenty miles from Flushing. The attack was made 
by night and in boats. Sidney showed great courage and alertness, 
and the garrison surrendered without striking a blow. After 
providing for the government of the town, Sidney joined the main 
body of the army, which was with Leicester at Arnhem, but he 
was soon ordered back to his post at Flushing. On 2 Sept. he 
took part in the successful assault on Doesburg, a weak fortress 
near Arnhem. 

A few days later Leicester wisely resolved to attack the strong- 
hold of Zutphen. On 13 Sept. he brought his army within sight 
of the town, and encamped with the infantry on the left bank of 
the river Yssel, which ran beside the town, leaving the cavalry 



390 



SIDNEY LEE 



on the right bank, near the village of Warnsfeld, under the joint 
command of Count Lewis William of Nassau and Sir John Norris. 
Sidney joined the latter as a volunteer and knight-errant (Motley, 
ii. 46). His regiment of horse was at Deventer, whither it had been 
sent to quell an anticipated revolt. On the 21st news arrived that 
a troop of Spaniards convoying provisions was to arrive at Zutphen 
at daybreak next morning. Leicester directed Norris, with two 
hundred horsemen, and Sir Wilham Stanley, with three hundred 
horsemen, to intercept the approaching force. Sidney and his 
brother Robert determined on their own initiative to join in the^ 
attack. When leaving his tent at a very early hour in the morning 
of Thursday the 22nd, Philip met Sir William Pelham, who had 
omitted to put on his leg-armour. Sidney, rashly disdaining the 
advantage of better equipment than a friend, quixotically threw 
off his own cuisses. A thick fog at first obscured the enemy's 
movements. When it lifted, the little force of five hundred English 
horsemen found itself under the walls of Zutphen and in face of 
a detachment of the enemy's cavalry three thousand strong. 
The English charged twice, but were compelled on each occasion 
to retreat after hard fighting. During the second charge Sidney's 
horse was killed under him. Mounting another, he foolhardily 
thrust his way through the enemy's ranks, and, when turning to 
rejoin his friends, he was struck by a bullet on the left thigh, a 
little above the knee. He managed to keep his saddle until he 
reached the camp, a mile and a half distant. There, parched with 
thirst, he called for drink. A bottle of water was brought, but as 
he was placing it to his lips, a grievously wounded foot soldier 
was borne past him and fixed greedy eyes on the bottle. Sidney 
at once handed it to the dying man with the famous words, ' Thy 
necessity is yet greater than mine' (Greville, p. 145; cf. Motley, 
ii. 51 seq., where the dates, given in the new style, are ten days 
later). 

From the camp Sidney was carried in Leicester's barge down 
the Yssel and the Rhine to Arnhem, and lodged in the house of 
a lady named Gruithuissens. His wife, although far advanced in 
pregnancy, hastened from Flushing to nurse him, and his brother 
Robert was a frequent visitor to the sick-chamber. The wound 
failed to heal, and ultimately mortified. Sidney at the outset 



THE LIFE OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 39 1 

trembled at the approach of death, but the consolations of religion 
restored his equanimity, and he awaited the end with pathetic 
composure. He improvised a short poem, called 'La Cuisse 
rompue," and caused it to be set to music and sung at his bedside. 
To a learned friend, Belarius, he wrote a Latin letter, a copy of 
which was forwarded to the queen. Both poem and letter are lost. 
He ordered his 'Arcadia' to be burned. Finally he dictated a 
will in which he showed characteristic consideration for his friends 
and dependents. His widow was nominated sole executrix. A 
codicil, dated the day of his death, made some trifling changes in 
the smaller legacies. He died after twenty-six days' suffering on 
17 Oct., bidding his relatives with his last breath love his memory 
and cherish his friends (Greville, p. 160). 

The States- General begged the honour of according the hero 
burial within their own dominions, and offered to spend half a ton 
of gold on a memorial. But the request was refused. On 24 Oct. 
the body, after being embalmed, was removed to Flushing. On 
I Nov. twelve hundred English soldiers and a great concourse 
of Dutch burghers escorted the coffin to Sidney's own vessel, 
The Black Pinnace, which, with sails of black, landed its burden 
at Tower Hill on 5 Nov. Thence the coffin was borne to a house 
in the Minories to await a public funeral. But three months 
expired before the interment. The delay was due to pecuniary 
difl&culties. The creditors of Sidney and his father were numerous 
and importunate. It appeared that lands assigned by Sidney's 
will to Walsingham for the satisfaction of his creditors were diffi- 
cult to realise, while the lawyers raised doubts as to the lawfulness 
of the disposition of his property. Walsingham reluctantly paid 
6,000/. out of his own pocket, and then appealed for help to 
Leicester. It was not till 16 Feb. that Sidney's friends found 
themselves in a position to face the heavy expenses of the public 
funeral which his deserts in their eyes and in the eyes of the 
nation demanded. 

On 16 Feb. 1586^7 seven hundred mourners of all classes walked 
in the procession to St. Paul's Cathedral. At its head marched 
thirty-two poor men and Sidney's regiment of horse. The pall- 
bearers were Fulke Greville, Edward Wotton, Edward Dyer, and 
Thomas Dudley. His brother Robert was chief mourner. Each 



392 SIDNEY LEE 

of the seven united provinces sent a representative. The cortege 
was closed by the lord-mayor and three hundred of the city trained 
bands. The grave was under the lady-chapel at the back of the 
high altar. In 1590 Sir Francis Walsingham was laid in the same 
tomb, which was destroyed in the great fire of 1666. 

Thomas Lant [q. v.] published thirty-four engraved copper- 
plates of the funeral procession and ceremony, with a description 
in Latin and English. It was entitled 'Sequitur Celebritas et 
Pompa Funeris' (London, 1587, oblong folio). 

By the terms of his will, Sidney's father-in-law Walsingham 
and his brother Robert had authority to defray his own and his 
father's debts from the sale of his lands in Lincolnshire, Sussex, 
and Hampshire. His wife he left for life half the income of his 
various properties. His daughter Frances received a marriage 
portion of 4,000/., and his younger brother Thomas lands to the 
value of 100/. a year. To his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, 
he left 'his best Jewell beset with diamonds;' to his friends 
Edward Dyer and Fulke Greville he bequeathed his books. 
Surgeons and divines who attended his deathbed, and all his ser- 
vants at home, from his steward Griffith Madox, who received an 
annuity of 40Z., downwards, were substantial legatees. The re- 
sidue of his estate passed to his brother Robert (cf . Sydney Papers, 
i. 109-13). Sir Philip's widow, who, at great risk to her life, 
was delivered of a still-born child in December 1586, proved the 
will on 19 June 1589. Next year she married Robert Devereux, 
second earl of Essex [q. v.], and, after his death in 160 1, Richard de 
Burgh, earl of Clanricarde. She died before 1635. By her Sidney 
was the father of a daughter, Frances, on whose birth, on 31 Jan. 
1583-4, Scipio Gentili, the civilian, wrote a Latin poem entitled 
'Nereus' (London, 1585, 4to); Queen Elizabeth was her god- 
mother; she married Roger Manners, earl of Rutland [q. v.], 
and died without issue in August 161 2. Jonson describes her as 
'nothing inferior to her father in poesie' {Conversations, p. 16). 

The grief which Sidney's death evoked has been rarely paral- 
leled. It was accounted a sin for months afterwards for any 
gentleman of quality to wear gay apparel in London. From all 
classes came expressions of dismay. The queen was overwhelmed 
with sorrow, although she afterwards complained that Sidney 



THE LIFE OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 393 

invited death by his rashness (Naunton, p. 19). 'What perfec- 
tion he was born unto, and how able he was to serve her majesty 
and his country, all men here almost wonder,' wrote his uncle 
Leicester to Walsingham from the Hague eight days after his 
death. The sentiment was repeated in every variety of phrase. 
'This is that Sidney,' wrote Camden, 'who as Providence seems 
to have sent him into the world to give the present a specimen 
of the ancients, so it did on a sudden recall him and snatch him 
from us as more worthy of heaven than of earth.' Thomas Nash, 
in his 'Piers Penilesse,' apostrophised Sidney in the words 'Well 
couldst thou give every virtue his encouragement, every wit his 
due, every writer his desert, 'cause none more virtuous, witty, or 
learned than thyself.' Both the universities published collections 
of elegies. At Cambridge the volume which was edited by Alex- 
ander Neville (1544-1614) [q. v.] was dedicated to Leicester, and 
included a sonnet in EngKsh by James VI of Scotland, with Latin 
translations of it by the king, by Patrick, lord Gray, Sir John 
Maitland, Alexander Seton, and by James Halkerston, who con- 
tributed two versions. At Oxford two volumes appeared, one 
edited by WiUiam Gager and entitled 'Exequise | Illustrissimi 
Equitis D. Philip- | Pi Sidnsei, Gratissi- | mae Memoriae Ac No- 
Mini Impensae,' with a dedication to Leicester; the other, editec 
by John Lhuyd and dedicated to Sidney's brother-in-law, the Earl 
of Pembroke, under the title 'Peplos | Illustrissimi | viri D. Phi- 
lippi I Sidnaei Supre- | Mis Honoribus Dictatus | .' The chief 
contributors to the latter were members of New College. 

The most interesting of the poetic memorials, which numbered 
fully two hundred, is the collection of eight elegies which was 
appended in 1595 to Spenser's 'CoHn Clouts come Home again.' 
The opening poem, entitled 'Astrophel: a Pastorall Elegie,' after 
which the collection is usually named, was by Spenser himself, 
and was dedicated to Sidney's widow, who had then become the 
Earl of Essex's wife. Sidney's sister, the Countess of Pembroke, 
Lodowick Bryskett, Matthew Roydon, and Sir Walter Ralegh are 
among the contributors to the collection. Other poetical tributes 
of literary or bibKographical interest were issued in separate vol- 
umes by Sir WilKam Herbert {d. 1593) [q. v.] in 1586; by George 
Whetstone [q. v.] in 1586; by John Philip {fi. 1566) [q. v.] in 1587, 



394 SIDNEY LEE 

dedicated to the Earl of Essex; by Angel Day [q. v.] in 1587; 
and by Thomas Churchyard [q. v.], dedicated to Lady Sidney 
(n. d.). Funeral songs with music appeared in William Byrd's 
'Psalms, Sonnets, and Songs,' 1588, while five pieces on the same 
theme by the mysterious 'A. W.' are in Davison's 'Poetical 
Rhapsody' (ed. Bullen, i. 63-71, ii. 90-3). A charming elegy, 
'Amoris Lachrymae,' figures in Breton's 'Bowre of Delights' 
(London, R. Johnes, 1591, 4to), and an eclogue on Sidney in 
Drayton's 'Eclogues' (1593, No. 4). 

Sidney's force of patriotism and religious fervour were accom- 
panied by much political sagacity, by high poetical and oratorical 
gifts, and by unusual skill in manly sports. Such versatility, allied 
to a naturally chivalric, if somewhat impetuous, temperament, 
generated a rare personal fascination, the full force of which was 
brought home to his many friends by his pathetic death, from a 
wound received in battle, at the early age of thirty-two. His 
achievements, when viewed in detail, may hardly seem to justify 
all the eulogies in verse and prose which his contemporaries be- 
stowed upon his brief career ; but the impression that it left in its 
entirety on his countrymen's imagination proved ineffaceable. 
Shelley, in his 'Adonais,' gave expression to a sentiment still 
almost universal among Englishmen when he wrote of 

Sidney as he fought 
And as he fell, and as he lived and loved, 
Sublimely mild, a spirit without spot. 

Portraits of Sidney are very numerous. A picture containing full- 
length life-size figures of Sir Philip and his younger brother Robert 
is at Penshurst. There also is the famiHar and often engraved 
three-quarter length, life-size, with clean-shaven face, by Zucchero, 
dated 1577, when Sidney was twenty- two. The miniature by 
Isaac Oliver, in which Sidney is represented reclining under a tree 
and wearing a tall hat, with the gardens at Wilton in the back- 
ground, is now at Windsor ; it was finely engraved by Vertue for the 
'Sydney Papers,' to which it forms the frontispiece, and there is a 
good photogravure in Jusserand's 'Enghsh Novel' (English 
transl. 1890). Another miniature by Oliver, in a silver filigree 
frame, belongs to Sir Charles Dilke, and a third miniature (anony- 
mous) is at Penshurst. There seems nothing to confirm the con- 



THE LIFE OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 395 

jecture that the last reproduces the portrait, apparently lost, which 
was painted for Sidney's friend Languet by Paolo Veronese at 
Venice in 1574, and there is no means of identifying a second por- 
trait noticed by Languet as in the possession of one Abondius at 
Vienna in the same year (cf . Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. x. 308 ; 
Gent. Mag. 1854, ii. 152-3). At Woburn a portrait doubtfully 
assigned to Sir Antonio More is on fairly good grounds identified 
with Sidney; it has been engraved. A very attractive half-length 
portrait (anonymous) is in the collection of the Earl of Warwick. 
Another portrait attributed to Zucchero, painted after Sidney's 
death, belongs to the Marquis of Lothian. A portrait labelled 
' Sir Philip Sidney who writ the Arcadia ' belongs to the Earl of 
Darnley. Another is at Knole. An engraving by C. Warren, 
from a portrait at Wentworth Castle, inaccurately attributed to 
Velasquez, prefaces Zouch's 'Memoirs' (1809); Dr. Waagen 
assigns this portrait to the Netherlandish school. Dallaway 
{Anecdotes of Paintings) mentions a portrait by J. de Critz. 
Among numerous engravings may be mentioned the rare copper- 
plates by Renold Elstracke [q. v.], by Thomas Lant [q. v.] (in 
the account of Sidney's funeral, 1587, reproduced in 'Astrophel 
and Stella,' ed. Pollard), and by Simon Pass [q. v.] in Holland's 
'Herwologia.' There is a stained-glass window with a full- 
length portrait in the hall of the university of Sydney, New South 
Wales. 

Sidney's literary work has done much to keep his fame alive. 
None of it was published in his lifetime, but all of it was widely 
read in manuscript copies, and the reluctance of his friends to 
authorise its publication led to the issue of surreptitious editions 
which perplex the conscientious bibliographer. 

In 1587 there appeared a translation from the French prose of 
Plessis du Mornay, entitled 'A Woorke concerning the trewnesse 
of the Christian Religion.' This was begun by Sidney, but was 
completed and pubHshed by Arthur Golding [q. v.]. It was at 
once popular, and reissues are dated 1587, 1592, 1604, and 161 7. 

The 'Arcadia,' begun in 1580 and probably completed before 
his marriage in 1583, was the earhest of Sidney's purely Hterary 
compositions to be printed. Within a few months of its author's 
death Greville wrote to Walsingham that the publisher, William 



396 SIDNEY LEE 

Ponsonby, had told him of a forthcoming edition, of which Sidney's 
friends knew nothing. Greville suggested that 'more deHbera- 
tion' was required before Sidney's books should be given to the 
world (cf . State Papers, Dom. Eliz. cxcv. No. 43 ; Arber, Garner, 
i. 488-9). On 22, Sept. 1588, however, Ponsonby obtained a 
license for the pubHcation of the 'Arcadia.' In 1589 Puttenham, 
in his 'Art of Enghsh Poesie,' wrote: 'Sir Philip Sidney in the 
description of his mistresse excellently well handled this figure of 
resemblaunce by imagerie, as ye may see in his booke of Archadia.' 
But the romance was not published till 1590, when Ponsonby issued 
in quarto 'The Covntesse of Pembroke's Arcadia, written by Sir 
Philippe Sidnei' (copies are at the British Museum, and in the 
Huth, Britwell, and Rowfant Libraries). The 'overseer' (i.e 
printer's reader) admitted his own responsibility for the division 
of the work into chapters, and for the distribution through the 
prose text of the poetical eclogues. The whole was divided into 
three books. Another edition, 'now since the first edition aug- 
mented and ended,' was issued by Ponsonby in 1593 in folio 
(a unique copy is at Britwell). In an address to the reader H. S. 
(possibly Henry Salisbury [q. v.]) stated that the work had been 
revised and supplemented from Sidney's manuscripts by his sister, 
the Countess of Pembroke. She now divided the work into five 
books instead of three, while changes were made in the arrange- 
ment of the poems and many new ones supplied. An edition, 
'now the third time published, with sundry new additions of the 
same author' (London, 1598, fol.), also undertaken by Ponsonby 
under Lady Pembroke's direction, contained the previously pub- 
lished 'Apologie for Poetrie' and 'Astrophel and Stella,' with 
some hitherto unprinted poems and the masque of the 'Lady of 
May.' This is the definitive edition of Sidney's works, and it was 
constantly reissued. Robert Waldegrave printed an edition at 
Edinburgh in 1599, copies of which were unlawfully imported into 
England. Later folio issues of bibliographical interest were dated 
1605 (by Matthew Lownes), 16 13 (for Simon Waterson, with a 
new 'dialogue betweene two shepherds ... at Wilton'), 162 1 
(Dublin, printed by the Societie of Stationers, with the supplement 
to the third book of the 'Arcadia' by Sir William Alexander, 
originally published separately), 1623 (London, with Alexander's 



THE LIFE OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 397 

supplement), 1627 (with Beling's sixth book, separately title- 
paged). Other reissues appeared in 1629, 1633, 1638 (with a 
second supplement to the third book by Ja. Johnstoun), 1655 
(with memoir and 'a, remedie of love'), 1662, and 1674. A 
reprint of 1725 of Sidney's 'works ... in prose and verse,' in 
3 vols. 8vo, was described as the fourteenth edition, and a modern- 
ised version of the 'Arcadia' by Mrs. Stanley was issued in the 
same year. No other reprint was attempted till 1867, when 
J. Hain Friswell edited an abridgement. A facsimile reprint 
of the quarto of 1590, with bibhographical introduction by Dr. 
Oskar Sommer, appeared in 189 1. 

The 'Arcadia' was written by Sidney for the amusement of 
his sister, the Countess of Pembroke. It was 'done,' he wrote, 
*in loose sheets of paper, most of it in his sister's presence, the rest 
by sheets sent unto her as fast as they were done.' The work 
bears traces of this method of composition. It relates in rambling 
fashion the stirring adventures of two princes, Musidorus of 
Thessaly and Pyrocles of Macedon, who, in the face of many 
dangers and difficulties, sue for the hands of the princesses Pamela 
and Philoclea, daughters of Basilius, king of Arcady, and of his 
lascivious queen Gynecia. Numerous digressions divert the 
reader's attention from the chief theme. Battles and tournaments 
fill a large space of the canvas, and they are portrayed with all the 
sympathy of a knight-errant. But the chivalric elements are 
balanced by the complications incident to romance, in which the 
men often disguise themselves as women and the women as men, 
and by pastoral eclogues mainly in verse, in which rustic life and 
feeling are contrasted with those of courts. In the long speeches 
which are placed in the mouths of all the leading actors, much 
sagacious philosophic or ethical reflection is set before the reader, 
and there are some attractive descriptions of natural scenery. 

The work, in which the tumult of a mediaeval chivalric romance 
thus alternates with the placid strains of pastoral poetry, is an out- 
come of much reading of foreign literature. The title of the whole 
and most of the pastoral episodes were drawn from the 'Arcadia' 
of the Neapolitan, Jacopo Sanazaro, which was first published at 
Milan in 1504 (French translation, 1544). But Sidney stood more 
directly indebted to Spanish romance — to the chivalric tales of 



398 SIDNEY LEE 

'Amadis' and 'Palmerin,' and above all to the 'Diana Enamo- 
rada,' by George Montemayor (itself an imitation of Sanazaro's 
'Arcadia'), which was first published in 1542, and first translated 
into EngUsh by Bartholomew Yong in 1598. From 'Diana' 
Sidney avowedly translated two songs that figure in the 'certain 
sonnets' appended to the 'Arcadia.' Signs are not wanting, too, 
that Sidney had studied the ' ^Ethiopica ' of Heliodorus, of which 
Thomas Underdown [q. v.] pubhshed a translation in 1587. 
Sidney, in his 'Apologie for Poetrie' (ed. Shuckburgh, p. 12), 
made appreciative reference to Heliodorus's 'sugred invention of 
that picture of love in his Theagines and Cariclea.' Possibly, 
too, a part of Sidney's scheme was due to Lyly's 'Euphues,' which 
was published a year before the 'Arcadia' was begun. 

Both in his 'Apologie' and in his 'Sonnets' (No. iii.), Sidney 
condemned the conceits of the euphuists who 'rifled up' stories of 
beasts, fowls, and fishes on which to nurture conceits, and Drayton 
(in Of Poets and Poesy) claimed for 'noble' Sidney that he made 
a successful stand against the tyranny of Lyly's ' Euphues : ' 

[And] throughly paced our language, as to show 
The plenteous English hand in hand might go 
With Greek and Latin, and did first reduce 
Our tongue from Lilly's writing then in use. 

But the prose of the 'Arcadia' is diffuse and artificial, and 
abounds in tricks as indefensible and irritating as any sanctioned 
by Lyly. Sidney overloads his sentences with long series of weak 
epithets, while he abounds in far-fetched metaphors. Oases of 
direct narrative exist, but they are rare. Mr. George Macdonald, 
in his 'Cabinet of Gems' (1892), has, however, shown that, by 
gentle pruning, short extracts from the 'Arcadia' can assume 
graces of simplicity which are only occasionally recognisable in the 
work in its original shape. In the verse in the 'Arcadia' Sidney 
not only experimented in English with classical metres, but with 
the terza rima, sestina, and canzonet of modern Italy. 

But defects of theme and style passed unrecognised in the six- 
teenth and seventeenth centuries. The book at once established it- 
self in popular esteem, and for more than a hundred years enjoyed 
an undisputed vogue. In Holinshed's 'Chronicle,' while Sidney 
was still alive, and the work in manuscript, the 'Arcadia' was 



THE LIFE OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 



399 



eulogised by his friend Edmund Molyneux for 'its excellencie of 
spirit, gallant invention, varietie of matter, orderlie disposition,' 
and 'apt words.' Greville described the work as, in the opinion 
of Sidney's friends, much inferior to 'that unbounded spirit of his,' 
but he regarded it as at once an artistic and ethical tour de force. 
Gabriel Harvey eulogised it as ' the simple image of his gentle wit 
and the golden pillar of his noble courage.' Hakewill called it 
'nothing inferior to the choicest piece among the ancients.' 
Almost from the day of its pubHcation court ladies imitated its 
affected turns of speech (cf. Dekker, GidVs Hornbook, 1609; 
Ben Jonson, Every Man out of his Humour, act ii. sc. i. 1600). 
Early in the seventeenth century a gentleman of fashion would 
compliment a lady 'in pure Sir PhiHp Sidney' {Anecdotes, Cam- 
den Soc. p. 64). A prayer spoken by Pamela {Arcadia, bk. iii.) 
was almost literally reproduced in a few copies of the 'EtKcbv 
BatriXtKi},' and one of the charges made against the king's memory 
by Milton was that he stole a prayer 'word for word from the 
mouth of a heathen woman, praying to a heathen god, and that in 
no serious book, but in the vain amatorious poem of Sir Philip 
Sidney's Arcadia' {Eikonoklastes, 1649, 1650). 

The influence of the romance on contemporary literature was 
considerable. Shakespeare based on Sidney's story of the ' Paphla- 
gonian unkind king' (bk. ii.) the episode of Gloucester and his 
sons in ' King Lear, ' while many phrases in his plays, especially 
in the 'Tempest' and 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' closely 
resemble expressions in the 'Arcadia,' and justify the conjecture 
that he studied the romance as carefully as he studied Sidney's 
sonnets or his masque of the 'Lady of May' (cf. Shaksperian 
Parallelisms collected from Sir Philip Sydney^ s 'Arcadia' by 
Eliza M. West, privately printed, 1865) . There is an unmistakable 
resemblance between Holofernes in 'Love's Labour's Lost' and 
Rombus, the pedantic schoolmaster in Sidney's masque, which 
reads like a first draft of one of the pastoral incidents of the 'Ar- 
cadia,' and was from 1598 onwards always printed with it. 
Spenser's 'Faerie Queene' also stands indebted at many points 
to Sidney's romance (cf. Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. vols. iii. and 
iv. passim). 

Extracts and epitomes of the 'Arcadia' were long popular as 



400 SIDNEY LEE 

chap-books, and continuations abounded. 'The English Arcadia 
alluding his beginning to Philip Sidnes ending,' by Gervase Mark- 
ham [q. v.], appeared in 1607. William Alexander, earl of Stirling, 
published in 162 1 'a supplement of a defect in the third part of 
Sidney's Arcadia.' A 'Sixth Booke to the Countesse of Pem- 
brokes Arcadia, written by R[ichard] B[eling] of Lincolnes Inn,' 
was issued in 1624, and this, like Alexander's supplement, was 
included in all the later editions. 'Continuation of Sir Philip 
Sidney's Arcadia, wherein is handled the loves of Amphialus and 
Helen . . . written by a young gentlewoman, Mrs. A. W[eames],' 
was published in 1651. 

Among avowed imitations may be mentioned Nathaniel Baxter's 
philosophical poem 'Sir Philip Sidney's Ourania' (1606), 'The 
Countess of Montgomery's Urania,' by Lady Mary Wroth, Sid- 
ney's niece (162 1), and John Reynolds's 'Flower of Fidelitie' 
(1650). Sidney's incidental story of 'Argalus and Parthenia' 
was retold in verse by Francis Quarles in 1629. 

Plots of plays were also drawn from the 'Arcadia.' John Day 
described the argument of his 'He of Guls' (1606) as 'a little 
string or rivolet drawne from the gull streme of the right worthy 
gentleman Sir Philip Sidneys well knowne Archadea.' The plots 
of Shirley's pastoral play called 'The Arcadia' (1614) and Beau- 
mont and Fletcher's 'Cupid's Revenge' (1615) came from the 
same source. Similar efforts of later date were 'Andromana, or 
the Merchant's Wife,' by J. S., doubtfully identified with Shirley 
(1660); William Mountfort's 'Zelmane' (1705); Macnamara 
Morgan's 'Philoclea' (1754), and 'Parthenia, an Arcadian 
drama' (1764). 

During the eighteenth century Sidney's romance gradually lost 
its reputation. Addison noticed it among the books which the 
fair Leonora bought for her own shelves {Spectator^ 12 April 171 1). 
Richardson borrowed from Sidney's character of Pamela the name 
of his heroine, and at least one of her adventures. Cowper read 
the 'Arcadia' with delight, and wrote in 'The Task' (bk. iii. 
1. 514) of 'those Arcadian scenes' sung by 'Sidney, warbler 
of poetic prose.' But more recent critics estimate the merits 
of the romance more moderately. Horace Walpole declared that 
Sidney wrote with the sangfroid and prolixity of Mile. Scuderi. 



THE LIFE OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 401 

Hazlitt regarded the 'Arcadia' as one of the greatest monuments 
of the abuse of intellectual power upon record. Hallam was more 
favourable, but classes it with 'long romances, proverbially the 
most tiresome of all books.' To the literary historian the 'Ar- 
cadia ' is now mainly of value as the most famous English example 
of the type of literature which the modern novel displaced. 

Abroad the 'Arcadia' met, in its early days, with an enthusiastic 
reception. Du Bartas in his 'Seconde Semaine' (1584) spoke 
of 'Milor Cidne' as constituting, with More and Bacon, one of the 
three pillars of the English speech. The romance was twice 
translated into French, first by J. Baudouin as 'L'Arcadie de la 
Comtesse de Pembrok, mise en nostre langage' (Paris, 1624, 
3 vols. 8vo), with fancy portraits of Sidney and of his sister. The 
second translation, of which the opening part was the work of 
'un brave gentilhomme,' and the rest by Mile. Genevieve Chap- 
pelain, was published by Robert Fouet in 1625, and is ornamented 
with attractive engravings. In Charles Sorel's satire on sixteenth- 
century romance, entitled 'Le Berger Extravagant,' 1628 (iii. 70, 
134), praise was lavished on the discourses of love and politics 
which figure in the 'Arcadia.' 'La Cour Bergere,' a tragi- 
comedy in verse, largely drawn from the 'Arcadia,' by Antoine 
Mareschal, was published at Paris in 1640, with a dedication to 
Sidney's nephew, Robert Sidney, second earl of Leicester [q. v.], 
Niceron in 1731 described the 'Arcadia' as full of intelligence 
and very well written in his 'Memoires pour servir,' while Florian, 
in his 'Essai sur la Pastorale,' which he prefixed to 'Estelle' 
(1788), described Sidney with D'Urfe, Montemayor, and Cer- 
vantes as his literary ancestors. 

A German translation by Valentinus Theocritus was published 
at Frankfurt-am-Main in 1629, and was revised by Martin Opitz 
in an edition of 1643. A reprint of the latter appeared at Leyden 
in 1646. 

The collection of sonnets called 'Astrophel and Stella' has, of 
all Sidney's literary achievements, best stood the tests of time. It 
consisted in its authentic form of 108 sonnets and eleven songs. 
In 1 59 1, within a year of the first issue of the 'Arcadia,' a publisher, 
Thomas Newman, secured a manuscript version of the sonnets, 
and on his own initiative issued an edition with a dedication to a 

2D 



402 SIDNEY LEE 

personal friend, Francis Flower, with an epistle to the reader by 
Thomas Nash (doubtless the editor of the volume), and an appen- 
dix of 'sundry other rare sonnets by diuers noblemen and gentle- 
men.' Sidney's friends in September 1591 appealed to Lord 
Burghley to procure the suppression of this unauthorised venture 
(cf. Arber, Stationers^ Registers, i. 555). A month later, appar- 
ently, another unauthorised publisher, Matthew Lownes, issued an 
independent edition, a copy of which, said to be unique, is in the 
Bodleian Library. Finally Newman, at the soHcitation of Sid- 
ney's friends, reissued his volume in 1591 without the prefatory 
matter and with many revisions of the text (cf. copy in Brit. Mus.). 
The poems were again reprinted with the authorised edition of the 
'Arcadia' in 1598. There they underwent a completer recension ; 
an important sonnet (xxxviii), attacking Lord Rich by name, 
and two songs (viii and ix) were added for the first time, and the 
songs, which had hitherto followed the sonnets en bloc, were dis- 
tributed among them. This volume of 1598 also supplied for the 
first time 'certaine sonets of Sir Philip Sidney never before 
printed,' among which was the splendid lyric entitled 'Love's 
dirge,' with the refrain 'Love is dead,' which gives Sidney a 
high place among lyric poets. The sonnets were reprinted from 
Newman's two editions of 1591 by Mr. Arber in his 'English 
Garner,' i. 493 sq. With the songs and the 'Defence of Poesie,' 
they were edited by William Gray (Oxford, 1829), and by Dr. 
Fliigel, again with the 'Defence of Poesie,' in 1889. A compact 
reissue of 'Astrophel and Stella,' edited by Mr. A. W. Pollard, 
was published in 1891. 

The sonnets, which were probably begun in 1575, and ceased 
soon after Sidney's marriage in 1583, are formed on the simple 
model of three rhyming decasyllabic quatrains, with a concluding 
couplet. Whether or no they were designed at the outset as merely 
literary exercises, imitating Surrey's addresses to Geraldine, they 
portray with historical precision the course of Sidney's ambiguous 
relations with Lady Rich. There is no reason to contest Nash's 
description of their argument as 'cruel chastity — the prologue 
Hope, the epilogue Despair.' The opening poems, which are 
clumsily contrived, are frigid in temper, but their tone grows by 
slow degrees genuinely passionate; the feeling becomes 'full, 



THE LIFE OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 403 

material, and circumstantiated,' and many of the later sonnets, 
in reflective power, in felicity of phrasing, and in energy of senti- 
ment, are 'among the best of their sort' (cf. Lamb, 'Some Son- 
nets of Sir Phihp Sydney,' in Essays of Elia, ed. Ainger, pp. 286 
sq.). Shakespeare was doubtless indebted to them for the form 
of his own sonnets, and at times Sidney seems to adumbrate Shake- 
speare's subtlety of thought and splendour of expression. 

Next in importance, as in date of publication, comes Sidney's 
'Apologie for Poetrie.' About August 1579 Stephen Gosson 
published an attack on stage-plays, entitled 'The School of Abuse,' 
and he followed it up in November with an ' Apologie of the School 
of Abuse.' Both were dedicated to Sidney. On 16 Oct. 1579 
Spenser wrote from Leicester House to Gabriel Harvey: "Newe 
Bookes I heare of none but only of one, that writing a certaine 
booke called The Schoole of Abuse, and dedicating, it to Maister 
Sidney, was for hys labor scorned : if at leaste it be in the goodnesse 
of that nature to scome. Suche foUie is it, not to regarde afore 
hande the inclination and qualitie of him, to whom we dedicate 
oure bookes." Sidney at once set about preparing a retort to Gos- 
son, which took the form of an essay on the influence' of imagina- 
tive literature on mankind. By poetry he understood any work 
of the imagination. 'Verse,' he wrote, 'is but an ornament and 
no cause to poetry.' His 'Apologie' is in three parts; in the 
first, poetry is considered as teaching virtuous action, in the second 
the various forms of poetry are enumerated and justified, and in the 
third a sanguine estimate is offered of the past, present, and future 
position of English poetry. Sidney commended the work of 
Chaucer, Surrey, and Spenser, but failed to foresee the imminent 
greatness of English drama. He concluded with a spirited de- 
nunciation of the earth-creeping mind that cannot lift itself up to 
look at the sky of poetry. There is much that is scholastic and 
pedantic in the detailed treatment of his theme, but his general 
attitude is that of an enlightened lover of great literature. The 
work was first printed as an ' Apologie for Poetrie ' in a separate 
volume with four eulogistic sonnets by Henry Constable [q. v.] 
for Henry Olney in 1595. It was appended, with the title of the 
'Defence of Poesie,' to the 1598 edition of the 'Arcadia' and to 
all the reissues; it was edited separately in 1752 (Glasgow), bv 



404 SIDNEY LEE 

Lord Thurlow in 1810, by Professor Arber in 1868, and by Mr. 
E. S. Shuckburgh in 1891. 

Sidney's translation of the Psalms, in which his sister joined him, 
was long circulated in manuscript, and manuscript copies are 
numerous (cf. Bodl. Rawlinson MS., Poet. 25; Brit. Mus. Addit. 
MSS. 12047-8; and manuscript in Trin. Coll. Cambridge). 
Donne wrote a fine poem in praise of the work (cf. Poems, 1633; 
cf. Jonson^s Conversations with Drummond, p. 15). It was first 
printed in 1823 by Robert Triphook under the editorship of Samuel 
Weller Singer [q. v]., from a manuscript in the handwriting of 
John Davies of Hereford, then in the possession of B. H. Bright, 
but now at Penshurst. The title ran: 'The Psalmes of David 
translated into divers and sundry kindes of Verse, more rare and 
excellent for the Method and Variety than ever yet had been done 
in English. Begun by the noble and learned gent. Sir Philip 
Sidney, Knt., and finished by the right honorable the Countess of 
Pembroke, his sister.' The first forty- three psalms are, according 
to notes in the manuscript, alone by Sidney. The metres are very 
various. Psalm xxxvii is an early example of that employed 
by Tennyson in 'In Memoriam.' Sidney's renderings enjoyed 
the advantage of republication with discursive commentary by Mr. 
Ruskin ; Mr. Ruskin's edition of them forms the second volume 
of his 'BibHotheca Pastorum,' 1877, and bears the sub-title of 
'Rock Honey-comb.' Sidney's paraphrase, according to Mr, 
Ruskin, 'aims straight, and with almost fiercely fixed purpose, 
at getting into the heart and truth of the thing it has got to say; 
and unmistakably, at any cost of its own dignity, explaining that 
to the hearer, shrinking from no familiarity and restricting itself 
from no expansion in terms, that will make the thing meant 
clearer' (Pref. p. xvii). 

One of Sidney's poetic works is lost. When William Ponsonby 
obtained a license for the publication of the 'Arcadia' on 23 Sept. 
1588, he also secured permission to print 'a translation of Salust 
de Bartas done by the same S"^ P. into englishe.' Greville men- 
tioned in his letter to Walsingham that Sidney had executed this 
translation; and Florio, when dedicating the second book of his 
translation of Montaigne (1603) to Sidney's daughter, the Countess 
of Rutland, and to Sidney's friend. Lady Rich, notes that he had 



THE LIFE OF JOHN BUN Y AN 



405 



seen Sidney's rendering of 'the first septmane of that arch-poet Du 
Bartas/ and entreats the ladies to give it to the world. Nothing 
further is known of it. 

All Sidney's extant poetry was collected by Dr. Grosart in 1873 
(new edit. 1877). The editor includes, besides the sonnets, songs, 
poems from the 'Arcadia,' and the psalms, two 'pastoralls' 
from Davison's 'Poetical Rhapsody;' 'Affection's Snare,' from 
Rawlinson MS. Poet. 84; and 'Wooing-stuffe,' from 'Cottoni 
Posthuma' (p. 327), where it is appended to a short prose essay, 
'Valour Anatomized,' doubtfully assigned to Sidney. 



THE LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN 

EDMUND VENABLES 
[From the Dictionary of National Biography.] 

BuNYAN, John (1628-1688), author of the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' 
'Holy War,' 'Grace abounding,' &c., was born at the village 
of Elstow, Bedfordshire, a httle more than a mile south of the town 
of Bedford, in November 1628. His baptism is recorded in the 
parish register of Elstow on the 30th of that month. The family 
of Buignon, Buniun, Bonyon, or Binyan (the name is found spelt 
in no fewer than thirty-four different ways), had been settled in the 
county of Bedford from very early times. Their first place of 
settlement appears to have been the parish of Pulloxhill, about 
nine miles from John Bunyan's native village. In 1199 one Wil- 
liam Buniun held land at Wilstead, a mile from Elstow. In 1327 
one of the same name, probably his descendant, William Boynon, 
was living at the hamlet of Harrowden, at the south-eastern boun- 
dary of the parish, close to the very spot which tradition marks 
out as John Bunyan's birthplace, and which the local names of 
'Bunyan's End,' 'Bunyan's Walk,' and 'Farther Bunyan's' 
(as old^ certainly, as the middle of the sixteenth century) connect 
beyond all question with the Bunyan family. A field known as 
'Bonyon's End' was sold in 1548 by 'Thomas Bonyon of Elstow, 
labourer,' son of William Bonyon, to Robert Curtis, and other 
portions of his ancestral property gradually passed to other pur^ 



4o6 EDMUND V ENABLES 

chasers, little being left to descend to John Bunyan*s grandfather, 
Thomas Bunyan {d. 1641), save the 'cottage or tenement' in 
which he carried on the occupation of 'petty chapman,' or small 
retail trader. This, in his still extant will, he bequeathed to his 
second wife, Ann, and after her death to her stepson Thomas and 
her son Edward in equal shares. Thomas, the elder son, the father 
of the subject of this biography, was married three times, the first 
time (10 Jan. 1623) when only in his twentieth year, his second 
and third marriages occurring within a few months of his being left 
a widower. John Bunyan was the first child by his second mar- 
riage, which took place on 23 May 1627. The maiden name of his 
second wife was Margaret Bentley. She, like her husband, was 
a native of Elstow, and was born in the same year with him, 1603. 
A year after her marriage, her sister Rose became the wife of her 
husband's younger half-brother, Edward. The will of John Bun- 
yan's maternal grandmother, Mary Bentley {d. 1632), with its 
'Dutch-like picture of an Elstow cottage interior two hundred and 
fifty years ago,' proves (J. Brown, Biography of John Bunyan, to 
which we are indebted for all these family details) that his mother 
'came not of the very squalid poor, but of people who, though hum- 
ble in station, were yet decent and worthy in their ways.' John 
Bunyan 's father, Thomas Bunyan, was what we should now call a 
whitesmith, a maker and mender of pots and kettles. In his will 
he designates himself a 'brasier;' his son, who carried on the 
same trade and adopted the same designation when describing 
himself, is more usually styled a 'tinker.' Neither of them, how- 
ever, belonged to the vagrant tribe, but had a settled home at El- 
stow, where their forge and workshop were, though they doubtless 
travelled the country round in search of jobs. Contemporary liter- 
ature depicts the tinker's craft as disreputable; but we must dis- 
tinguish between the vagrant and the steady handicraftsmen, 
dwelling in their own freehold tenements, such as the Bunyans 
evidently were. Bunyan, in his intense self-depreciation, writes: 
'My descent was of a low and inconsiderable generation, my 
father's house being of that rank that is meanest and most despised 
of all the families of the land.' This is certainly not language 
that we should be disposed to apply to a family which had from 
time immemorial occupied the same freehold, and made testamen- 



THE LIFE OF JOHN BUN Y AN 



407 



tary dispositions of their small belongings. The antiquity of the 
family in Bunyan's native county effectually disposes of the strange 
hallucination which even Sir Walter Scott was disposed to favour, 
that the Bunyans, 'though reclaimed and settled,' may have 
sprung from the gipsy tribe. Bunyan's parents sent their son to 
school, either to the recently founded Bedford grammar school, 
or, which is more probable, to some humbler school at Elstow. 
He learned reading and writing ' according to the rate of other poor 
men's children.' 'I never went to school,' he writes, 'to Aris- 
totle or Plato, but was brought up at my father's house in a very 
mean condition, among a company of poor countrymen.' And 
what little he learned, he confesses with shame, when he was called 
from his primer and copy-book to help his father at his trade, 
was soon lost, ' even almost utterly.' In his sixteenth year (June 
1644) Bunyan suffered the irreparable misfortune of the loss of his 
mother, which was aggravated by his father marrying a second 
wife within two months of her decease. The arrival of a step- 
mother seems to have estranged Bunyan from his home, and to have 
led to his enlisting as a soldier. The civil war was then drawing 
near the end of its first stage. Bedfordshire was distinctly par- 
liamentarian in its sympathies. In the west it was cut off from 
any communication with the royalists by a strong line of parlia- 
mentary posts. These circumstances lead to the conclusion that 
a Bedfordshire lad was more likely to be found in the parliamen- 
tarian than in the royalist forces. This is Lord Macaulay's 
conclusion, and is supported by Bunyan's latest and most pains- 
taking biographer, the Rev. J. Brown. Mr. Froude, on the other 
hand, together with Mr. Offor and Mr. Copner, holds that ' prob- 
ability is on the side of his having been with the royalists.' As 
there is not a tittle of evidence either way, the question can never 
be absolutely settled. But we hold, against Mr. Froude, that all 
probability points to the parliamentary force as that in which 
Bunyan served. In all likelihood, on his attaining the regulation 
age of sixteen, which he did in November 1644, he was one of the 
'able and armed men' whom the parliament commanded his 
native county to send 'for soldiers' to the central garrison of 
Newport Pagnel, and included in one of the levies. The army 
was disbanded in 1646. Before this occurred Bunyan's provi- 



4o8 EDMUND V ENABLES 

dential preservation from death, which, according to his anony- 
mous biographer, 'was a frequent subject of thankful reference 
by him in later years.' 'When I was a soldier,' he says, 'I, 
with others, was drawn out to go to such a place to besiege it. 
But when I was just ready to go, one of the company desired to 
go in my room; to which when I consented, he took my place, 
and coming to the siege, as he stood sentinel he was shot in the 
head with a musket bullet and died.' Bunyan gives no hint as to 
the locality of the siege ; but, on the faith of a manifestly incorrect 
account of the circumstance in an anonymous life, published after 
his death, it has been currently identified with Leicester, which we 
know to have been taken by the royalist forces in 1645; and in 
direct contradiction to Bunyan's own words — for he says plainly 
that he stayed behind, and a comrade went in his room — he is 
described, and that even by Macaulay, as having taken part in 
the siege, either as a royalist assailant or as a parliamentary de- 
fender. Wherever the siege may have been, it is certain that 
Bunyan was not there. When the forces were disbanded, Bunyan 
must have returned to his native village and resumed his paternal 
trade. He 'presently afterwards changed his condition into a 
married state.' With characteristic reticence Bunyan gives neither 
the name of his wife nor the date of his marriage ; but it seems to 
have occurred at the end of 1648 or the beginning of 1649, when he 
was not much more than twenty. He and his wife were ' as poor 
as poor might be,' without 'so much household stuff as a dish or 
spoon between them.' But his wife came of godly parents, and 
brought two pious books of her father's to her new home, the' 
reading of which awakened the slumbering sense of religion in 
Bunyan's heart, and produced an external change of habits. 
Up to this time, though by no means what would be called 'a 
bad character' — for he was no drunkard, nor Hcentious — Bun- 
yan was a gay, daring young fellow, whose chief delight was in 
dancing, bell-ringing, and in all kinds of rural sports and pastimes, 
the ring-leader of the village youth at wake or merry-making, or in 
the Sunday sports after service time on the green. As a boy he 
had acquired the habit of profane swearing, in which he became 
such an adept as to shock those who were far from scrupulous in 
their language as 'the ungodliest fellow for swearing they ever 



THE LIFE OF JOHN BUN Y AN 409 

heard.' All this the influence of his young wife and her good 
books gradually changed. One by one he felt himself compelled 
to give up all his favourite pursuits and pastimes. He left off 
his habit of swearing at once and entirely. He was diligent in his 
attendance at services and sermons, and in reading the Bible, at 
least the narrative portions. The doctrinal and practical part, 
'Paul's epistles and such like scriptures,' he 'could not away 
with.' The reformation was real, though as yet superficial, and 
called forth the wonder of his neighbours. ' In outward things,' 
writes Lord Macaulay, 'he soon became a strict Pharisee;' 'a 
poor painted hypocrite,' he calls himself. For a time he was well 
content with himself. ' I thought no man in England could please 
God better than I.' But his self-satisfaction did not last long. 
The insufficiency of such a merely outward change was borne in 
upon him by the spiritual conversation of a few poor women whom 
he overheard one day when pursuing his tinker's craft at Bedford, 
'sitting at a door in the sun and talking about the things of God.' 
Though by this time somewhat of 'a brisk talker on religion,' 
he found himself a complete stranger to their inner experience. 
This conversation was the beginning of the tremendous spiritual 
conflict described by him with such graphic power in his ' Grace 
abounding.' It lasted some three or four years, at the end of 
which, in 1653, he joined the nonconformist body, to which 
these poor godly women belonged. This body met for wor- 
ship in St. John's Church, Bedford, of which the 'holy Mr. 
Gifford,' once a loose young officer in the royal army, had been 
appointed rector in the same year. His temptations ceased, his 
spiritual conflict was over, and he entered on a peace which was 
rendered all the more precious by the previous mental agony. 
The sudden alternations of hope and fear, the fierce temptations, 
the torturing illusions, the strange perversions of isolated texts, 
the harassing doubts of the truth of Christianity, the depths of 
despair and the elevations of joy through which he passed are fully 
described ' as with a pen of fire ' in that marvellous piece of reli- 
gious autobiography, unrivalled save by the ' Confessions ' of 
St. Augustine, his ' Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners.' 
Bunyan was at this time still resident at Elstow, where his blind 
child Mary and his second daughter Ehzabeth were born. It 



4IO EDMUND V ENABLES 

was probably in 1655 that Bunyan removed to Bedford. Here he 
soon lost the wife to whose piety he had owed so much, and about 
the same time his pastor and friend, the ' holy Mr. Gififord.' His 
own health also suffered; he was threatened with consumption, 
but his naturally robust constitution carried him safely through 
what at one time he expected would have been a fatal illness. 
In 1655 Bunyan, who had been chosen one of the deacons, began 
to exercise his gift of exhortation, at first privately, and as he gained 
courage and his ministry proved acceptable 'in a more publick 
way.' In 1657 his calling as a preacher was formally recognised, 
and he was set apart to that office, ' after solemn prayer and fast- 
ing,' another member being appointed deacon in his room, 
' brother Bunyan being taken off by preaching the gospel.' His 
fame as a preacher soon spread. When it was known that the 
once blaspheming tinker had turned preacher, they flocked 'by 
hundreds, and that from all parts,' to hear him, though, as he 
says, ' upon sundry and divers accounts ' — some to marvel, some 
to mock, but some with an earnest desire to profit by his words. 
After his ordination Bunyan continued to pursue his trade as a 
brazier, combining with it the exercise of his preaching gifts as 
occasion served in the various villages visited by him, 'in woods, 
in barns, on village greens, or in town chapels.' Opposition was 
naturally aroused among the settled ministry by such remarkable 
popularity. 'All the midland counties,' writes Mr. Froude, 
' heard of his fame and demanded to hear him.' In some places, 
as at Meldreth and Yelden, at the latter of which he had preached 
on Christmas day by the permission of the rector. Dr. William 
Dell, master of Gonville and Caius, the pulpits of the churches 
were opened to him ; in other places the incumbents of the parishes 
were his bitterest enemies. They, in the words of Mr. Henry 
Deane when defending Bunyan against the attacks of Dr. T. Smith, 
keeper of the university Hbrary at Cambridge, were 'angry with 
the tinker because he strove to mend souls as well as kettles and 
pans.' ' When I went first to preach the word abroad,' he writes, 
'the doctors and priests of the country did open wide against me.' 
In 1658 he was indicted at the assizes for preaching at Eaton 
Socon, but with what result is unrecorded. He was called 'a 
witch, a Jesuit, a highwayman;' he was charged with keeping 



THE LIFE OF JOHN BUN Y AN 41I 

'his misses,' with 'having two wives at once/ and other equally 
absurd and groundless accusations. His career as an author now 
began. His earliest work, 'Some Gospel Truths opened,' pub- 
lished at Newport Pagnel in 1656, with a commendatory letter by 
his pastor, John Burton, was a protest against the mysticism of the 
teaching of the quakers. Having been answered by Edward Bur- 
rough [q. v.], an ardent and somewhat foul-mouthed member of 
that sect, Bunyan replied the next year in 'A Vindication of Gos- 
pel Truths,' in which he repays his antagonist in his own coin, 
calling him 'a gross railing Rabshakeh,' who 'befools himself,' 
and proves his complete ignorance of the gospel. Like the former 
work it is written in a very nervous style, showing a great command 
of plain English, as well as a thorough acquaintance with Holy 
Scripture. A third book was published by Bunyan in 1658 on 
the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, under the horror-striking 
title of ' Sighs from Hell, or the Groans of a Damned Soul.' It 
issued from the press a few days before Cromwell's death. In this 
work, as its title would suggest, Bunyan gives full scope to his vivid 
imagination in describing the condition of the lost. It contains 
many touches of racy humour, especially in his similes, and the 
whole is written in the nervous, forcible English of which he was 
master. 

On the Restoration the old acts against nonconformists were 
speedily revived. The meeting-houses were closed. All persons 
were required under severe penalties to attend their parish church. 
The ejected clergy were reinstated. It became an illegal act to 
conduct divine service except in accordance with the ritual of the 
church, or for one not in episcopal orders to address a congregation. 
Bunyan continued his ministrations in barns, in private houses, 
under the trees, wherever he found brethren ready to pray and hear. 
So daring and notorious an offender was not likely to go long un- 
punished. Within six months of Charles's landing he was arrested, 
on 12 Nov. 1660, at the little hamlet of Lower Samsell by Har- 
lington, about thirteen miles from Bedford to the south, where 
he was going to hold a rehgious service in a private house. The 
issuing of the warrant had become known, and Bunyan might have 
escaped if he had been so minded, but he was not the man to play 
the coward. If he fled, it would 'make an ill-savour in the 



412 EDMUND V ENABLES 

county' and dishearten the weaker brethren. If he ran before 
a warrant, others might run before 'great words.' While he was 
conducting the service he was arrested and taken before Mr. Jus- 
tice Wingate, who, though really desirous to release him, was com- 
pelled by his obstinate refusal to forbear preaching to commit him 
for trial to the county gaol, which, with perhaps a brief interval 
of enlargement in 1666, was to be his 'close and uncomfortable' 
place of abode for the next twelve years. The prison to which 
Bunyan was committed was not, as an obstinate and widespread 
error has represented, the 'town gaol,' or rather lock-up house, 
which occupied one of the piers of the many- arched Ouse bridge, 
for the temporary incarceration of petty offenders against municipal 
law, but the county gaol, a much less confined and comfortless 
abode. A few weeks after his committal the quarter sessions for 
January 1661 were held at Bedford, and Bunyan was indicted for 
his offence. The proceedings seem to have been irregular. There 
was no desire on the part of the justices to deal hardly with the 
prisoner ; but he confessed the indictment, and declared his deter- 
mination to repeat the offence on the first opportunity. The 
justices had therefore no choice in the matter. They were bound 
to administer the law as it stood. So he was sentenced to a further 
three months' term of imprisonment, and if then he persisted in his 
contumacy he would be ' banished the realm,' and if he returned 
without royal license he would ' stretch by the neck for it.' To- 
wards the end of the three months, with an evident desire to avoid 
proceeding to extremities, the clerk of the peace was sent to him 
by the justices to endeavour to induce him to conform. But, as 
might have been anticipated, all attempts to bend Bunyan's sturdy 
nature were vain. Every kind of compromise, however kindly 
and sensibly urged, was steadily refused. He would not substitute 
private exhortation, which might have been allowed him, for public 
preaching. 'The law,' he replied, 'had provided two ways of 
obeying — one to obey actively, and if he could not bring his 
conscience to that, then to suffer whatever penalty the law enacted.' 
Three weeks later, 23 April 1661, the coronation of Charles II 
afforded an opportunity of enlargement. All prisoners for every 
offence short of felony were to be released. Those who were 
waiting their trials might be dismissed at once. Those convicted 



THE LIFE OF JOHN BUN Y AN 



413 



and under sentence might sue out a pardon under the great seal 
at any time within the year. Bunyan failed to profit by the royal 
clemency. Although he had not been legally convicted, for no 
witnesses had been heard against him, nor had he pleaded to the 
indictment, his trial having been little more than a conversation 
between him and the court, the authorities chose to regard it as 
a legal conviction, rendering it necessary that a pardon should be 
sued for. 

About a year before his apprehension at Samsell, Bunyan had 
taken a second wife, Elizabeth, to watch over his four little mother- 
less children. This noble-hearted woman showed undaunted cour- 
age in seeking her husband's release. She travelled to London with 
a petition to the House of Peers, from some of whom she met 
with kindly sympathy but little encouragement. ' The matter was 
one for the judges, not for them.' At the next midsummer assize, 
therefore, the poor woman on three several occasions presented her 
husband's formal request that he might be legally put on his trial 
and his case fully heard. Sir Matthew Hale, who was one of the 
judges of that assize, listened to her pitiful tale, and manifested 
much kind feeling. But he was powerless. 'Her husband had 
been duly convicted. She must either sue out his pardon, or obtain 
a writ of error.' Neither of these courses was adopted ; and wisely 
so, for, as Mr. Froude remarks, ' a pardon would have been of no 
use to Bunyan because he was determined to persevere in dis- 
obeying a law which he considered to be unjust. The most real 
kindness which could be shown him was to leave him where he 
was.' At the next spring assizes, in 1662, a strenuous effort was 
again made to get his case brought into court. This again failed. 
After this he seems to have desisted from any further attempt, and, 
with a slight interval in 1666, he remained in prison, not altogether 
unhappily, till 1672, twelve years from his first committal. The 
character of his imprisonment varied with the disposition of his 
gaolers. During the earlier part of the time he was allowed to 
follow his wonted course of preaching, 'taking all occasions to 
visit the people of God,' and even going to 'see christians in 
London. ' The B edf ord church books show that he was frequently 
present at church meetings during some periods of his imprison- 
ment. Such indulgence, however, was plainly irregular. Its 



414 EDMUND V ENABLES 

discovery nearly cost the gaoler his place, and brought on Bunyan 
a much more rigorous confinement. He was forbidden ' even to 
look out at the door.' For seven years out of the twelve, 1661-8, 
his name never occurs in the records of the church. In 1666, after 
six years of prison life, 'by the intercession of some in trust and 
power that took pity upon his suffering,' Bunyan was released. 
But in a few weeks he was arrested once more for his former 
offence, at a meeting, and returned to his former quarters for 
another six years. Being precluded by his imprisonment from 
carrying on his trade, he betook himself, for the support of his 
family, to making long tagged laces, many hundred gross of which 
he sold to the hawkers. Nor was 'the word of God bound.* 
The gaol afforded him the opportunity of exercising his ministerial 
gifts forbidden outside its walls. Many of his co-religionists from 
time to time were his fellow-prisoners, at one time as many as 
sixty. He gave religious instruction and preached to his feliow- 
prisoners, and furnished spiritual counsel to persons who were 
allowed to visit him. Some of his prison sermons were the rough 
drafts of subsequent more elaborate publications. His two chief 
companions were the Bible and Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs.' Bun- 
yan, as we have seen, had ventured on authorship before his im- 
prisonment. The enforced leisure of a gaol gave him abundant 
opportunity for its pursuit. Books and tracts, some in prose, 
some in verse, were produced by his fertile pen with great rapidity. 
His first prison book was in metre — we can hardly call it poetry — 
entitled 'Profitable Meditations,' in the form of dialogue, and 
has 'small literary merit of any sort' (Brown, p. 172). This was 
followed by 'Praying in the Spirit,' written in 1662 and pubhshed 
in 1663; 'Christian Behaviour,' written and published in the same 
year; the 'Four Last Things' and 'Ebal and Gerizim,' both in 
verse, the 'Holy City,' the 'Resurrection of the Dead,' and 
'Prison Meditations,' a reply in verse to a friend who had written 
to him in prison, which all appeared between 1663 and 1665. 
These minor productions were succeeded by his ' Grace aboundjng 
to the Chief of Sinners,' one of the three books by which Bunyan's 
name is chiefly known, which will ever hold a high place among 
records of spiritual experience. This appeared in 1666. About 
this time took place the few months' release from prison previously 



THE LIFE OF JOHN BUN Y AN 415 

alluded to. Our knowledge of this second six years' incarceration 
is almost a blank. Even his literary activity appears to have suf- 
fered a temporary paralysis. It was not till 1672 that his ' Defence 
of Justification by Faith ' appeared. This was a vehement attack 
on the 'brutish and beastly latitudinarianism ' of the 'Design 
of Christianity,' a book written by the Rev. Edward Fowler [q. v.], 
rector of Northill, which had recently attained great popularity, 
and which Richard Baxter also deemed worthy of a reply. 
Fowler's book seemed to Bunyan to aim a deadly blow at the very 
foundations of the gospel, and he took no pains to conceal his 
abhorrence of the attempt. With 'a ferocity' that, as Lord 
Macaulay has said, 'nothing can justify,' he assails the book and 
its author with a shower of vituperative epithets savouring of the 
earlier stage in his career when he was notorious for the bold license 
of his talk. He describes Fowler as 'rotten at heart,' 'heathen- 
ishly dark,' 'a prodigious blasphemer' 'dropping venom from 
his pen,' 'an ignorant Sir John,' one of 'a gang of rabbling, 
counterfeit clergy,' 'like apes covering their shame with their tail.' 
An anonymous reply, entitled 'Dirt wip't off,' supposed to be the 
joint production of Fowler and his curate, appeared the same year, 
almost rivalling Bunyan in the mastery of abusive epithets. Bun- 
yan 's last work before his enlargement, written in the early part of 
1672, was the ' Confession of my Faith and Reason of my Practice.' 
Its object was to vindicate his teaching and if possible to secure 
his liberty. That the imperishable allegory on which Bunyan's 
claim to immortality chiefly rests, the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' was 
also written in prison, we know on Bunyan's own authority. The 
'den' in which he dreamed his wonderful dream is identified 
by himself, in the third or first complete edition of 1679, with 'the 
gaol.' That this gaol was the strait and unwholesome lock-up 
house on Bedford bridge was long accepted as an undoubted fact. 
When it was shown that being a county prisoner it was impossible 
for him to have passed his twelve years' captivity in a town gaol 
intended for casual offenders, it was concluded that the county 
gaol, which was certainly the place of his incarceration, was also 
the place of the composition of the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' This 
conclusion has been recently called in question by the Rev. J. 
Brown, who gives reasons for believing that the composition of the 



4l6 EDMUND V ENABLES 

allegory belongs to a short six months' confinement, which, accord- 
ing to the story told by his anonymous biographer, and confirmed 
by Charles Doe, he was subjected to at a later period. The date of 
this imprisonment is fixed by Mr. Brown as 1675, and, according 
to the account preserved in Asty's 'Life of Owen,' he was released 
from it by the intervention of Dr. Thomas Barlow, bishop of Lin- 
coln, whose diocese then included the county of Bedford. The 
strongest argument in support of Mr. Brown's view is the improb- 
abihtythatif the 'Pilgrim's Progress' had been written during the 
twelve years' imprisonment which came to an end in 1672, it should 
have remained six years unpublished, the first edition not appearing 
till 1678. It was not Bunyan's way to keep his works so long in 
manuscript. Besides, in the author's poetical 'Apology for his 
Book,' his account of its composition and publication suggests 
that there was no such prolonged interval as the common accounts 
represent. 

Bunyan's twelve years' imprisonment came to an end in 1672. 
With the covert intent of setting up the Roman catholic religion 
in England, Charles II had suspended all penal statutes against 
nonconformists and popish recusants. Bunyan was one of those 
who profited by this infamous subterfuge. His pardon under the 
great seal bears date 13 Sept. 1672. This, however, was no more 
than the official sanction of what had been already virtually granted 
and acted on. For Bunyan had received one of the first licenses 
to preach given by the royal authority, dated 9 May of that year, 
and had been called to the pastorate of the nonconformist congre- 
gation at Bedford, of which he had been so long a member, on the 
2ist of the preceding January. The church of St. John, which 
had been occupied by this congregation during the Protectorate, 
had, on the Restoration, returned to its rightful owners, and the 
place licensed for the exercise of Bunyan's ministry was a barn in 
the orchard belonging to a member of the body. This continued 
to be the place of meeting of the congregation until 1707, when a 
new chapel was erected on its site. Though Bunyan made Bed- 
ford the centre of his work, he extended his ministrations through 
the whole country, and even beyond its limits. One of his first 
acts after his liberation was to apply to the government for licenses 
for preachers and preaching places in the country round. Among 



THE LIFE OF JOHN BUN VAN 417 

;hese he made stated circuits, being playfully known as * Bishop 
Bunyan/ his diocese being a large one, and, in spite of strenuous 
efforts at repression by the ecclesiastical authorities, steadily in- 
creasing in magnitude and importance. It is interesting to notice 
that Bunyan's father, the tinker of Elstow, lived on till 1676, being 
buried at Elstow on 7 Feb. of that year. In his will, while leaving 
a shilling apiece to his famous son and his three other children, 
he bequeathed all he had to his third wife, Ann, who survived 
him four years, and was buried in the same church -yard as her 
husband on 25 Sept. 1680. 

Bunyan's active ministerial labours did not interfere with his 
literary work ; this continued as prolific as when writing was almost 
the only relief from the tedium of his confinement. Besides 
minor works, in 1676 appeared the 'Strait Gate,' directed against 
an inconsistent profession of Christianity by those who, in his 
graphic language, can 'throw stones with both hands, alter their 
religion as fast as their company, can live in water and out of water, 
run with the hare and kill with the hounds, carry fire in one hand 
and water in the other, very any things.' This was succeeded 
in 1678 by the first edition of the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' and in the 
same year by the second, and the next year by the third, each with 
very important additions, including some of the best-known and 
most characteristic personages, such as Mr. Worldly Wiseman, 
Mr. By-ends and his family, and Mrs. Difl&dence, the wife of Giant 
Despair. 'Come and welcome to Jesus Christ,' 'with its musical 
title and soul-moving pleas,' was published in 1678, and his 'Trea- 
tise of the Fear of God' in 1679. The next year gave to the world 
one of Bunyan's most characteristic works, 'The Life and Death 
of Mr. Badman,' which, though now almost forgotten, and too 
disagreeable in its subject and its boldly drawn details to be alto- 
gether wholesome reading, displays Bunyan's inventive genius as 
powerfully as the universally popular 'Pilgrim,' of which, as 
Bunyan intended it to be, it is the strongly drawn contrast and foil. 
The one gives a picture of a man ' in the rank of English life with 
which Bunyan was most familiar,' to quote Mr. Froude, 'a vulgar, 
middle-class, unprincipled scoundrel,' 'travelling along the prim- 
rose path to the everlasting bonfire,' while the other sets before us 
a man essentially of the same social rank, fleeing from the wrath 

2E 



4l8 EDMUND VENABLES 

to come, and making his painful way 'to Emmanuel's Land 
through the Slough of Despond and the Valley of the Shadow of 
Death.' As a portrait of rough English country- town life in the 
days of Charles II, the later book is unapproached, save by the 
unsavoury tales of Defoe. ' The Life and Death of Mr. Badman' 
was followed, after a two years' interval, by Bunyan's second great 
work, 'The Holy War made by Shaddai upon Diabolus,' of which 
Macaulay has said, with somewhat exaggerated eulogy, that 'if 
there had been no "Pilgrim's Progress," the "Holy War" would 
have been the first of religious allegories.' There is a necessary 
unreality about the whole narrative as compared with Bunyan's 
former allegory. The characters are shadowy abstractions by the 
side of the 'representative realities' of the other work. With a 
truer estimate of the relative value of the two works, Mr. Froude 
says: '"The Holy War" would have entitled Bunyan to a place 
among the masters of English literature. It would never have 
made his name a household word in every English-speaking family 
in the globe.' Other works, notably the 'Barren Fig Tree' 
and 'The Pharisee and the Publican,' were given to the world 
in 1682 and the four succeeding years. In 1684 appeared the sec- 
ond part of the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' completing the history of 
Christian's pilgrimage with that of his wife Christiana and her 
children, and her companion, the young maiden Mercy. Like 
most second parts of popular works, this shows a decided falling 
off. It is ' but a feeble reverberation of the first part. Christiana 
and her children are tolerated for the pilgrim's sake to whom they 
belong.' But it bears the stamp of Bunyan's genius, and not a 
few of the characters. Old Honest, Mr. Valiant-for-the-Truth, 
Mr. Despondency and his daughter Miss Much-afraid, and the 
'young woman whose name was Dull,' have a vitality that can 
never decay. 

There is little more to notice in Bunyan's life. His activity was 
ceaseless, but ' the only glimpses we get of him during this time are 
from the church records, and these were but scantily kept,' and 
are quite devoid of public interest, chiefly dealing with the internal 
discipline of the body. Troublous times fell upon nonconformists. 
The Declaration of Indulgence was withdrawn the same year it 
was issued. The Test Act became law the next year (1673). In 



THE LIFE OF JOHN BUN Y AN 



419 



1675 the acts against nonconformists were put in force. Bunyan's 
preaching journeys were not always free from risk. There is 
a tradition that he visited Reading disguised as a wagoner, with 
a long whip in his hand, to escape detection. But he continued free 
from active molestation, with the exception of the somewhat hazy 
imprisonment placed by Mr. Brown in 1675. I^ ^^- Froude's 
words, 'he abstained, as he had done steadily throughout his life, 
from all interference with politics, and the government in turn never 
meddled with him.' He frequently visited London to preach, 
always getting large congregations. Twelve hundred would come 
together to hear him at seven o'clock on a weekday morning in 
winter. When he preached on a Sunday, the meeting-house 
would not contain the throng, haK being obliged to go away. 
A sermon delivered by him at Pinners' Hall in Old Broad Street 
was the basis of one of his theological works. He was on intimate 
terms with Dr. John Owen, who, when Charles II expressed his 
astonishment that so learned a divine could listen to an illiterate 
tinker, is recorded to have replied that he would gladly give up all 
his learning for the tinker's power of reaching the heart. In the 
year of his death he was chaplain, though perhaps unofficially, 
to Sir John Shorter, then lord mayor of London. He did not 
escape temptation to leave Bedford for posts of greater influence 
and dignity; but all such offers he steadily refused, as he did any 
opportunities of pecuniary gain for himself and his family, quietly 
staying at his post through all 'changes of ministry, popish plots, 
and Monmouth rebellions, while the terror of a restoration of 
popery was bringing on the revolution, careless of kings and cabi- 
nets ' (Froude, p. 174). When James II was endeavouring to 
remodel the corporations, Bunyan was pointed out as a likely 
instrument for carrying out the royal purpose in the corporation of 
Bedford. It seems that some place under government was offered 
as the price of his consent; but he declined all such overtures, 
and refused to see the bringer of them, though by no means un- 
willing to give his aid in securing the repeal of the penal laws and 
tests under which he and his flock had so long smarted. This was 
in November 1687, barely twelve months before James's abdica- 
tion. Three years before he had felt it so possible that he might 
be called again to suffer for conscience' sake under these same laws, 



420 EDMUND V ENABLES 

that he executed a deed of gift, dated 23 Dec. 1685, making ovei 
all his worldly possessions to his wife, Elizabeth Bunyan. 

Bunyan did not live to see the revolution. His death took place 
in 1688, four months after the acquittal of the seven bishops. In 
the spring of that year he had been enfeebled by an attack of 
'sweating sickness.' He caught a severe cold on a ride through 
heavy rain to London from Reading, whither he had gone to effect 
a reconciliation between a father and a son. A fever ensued, and 
he died on 31 Aug. at the house of his friend John Strudwick, who 
kept a grocer's and chandler's shop at the sign of the Star, Holborn 
Bridge, two months before he had completed his sixtieth year. 
He continued his literary activity to the last. Four books from his 
pen had been pubHshed in the first half of the year, and he partly 
revised the sheets of a short - treatise entitled ' The Acceptable 
Sacrifice' on his deathbed. He was buried in Mr. Strudwick's 
vault in the burial-ground in Bunhill Fields, Finsbury. His 
personal estate was sworn under 100/. 

Bunyan was the father of six children, four by his first wife, 
and two by the second. His elder child Mary, his blind child 
(born in 1650), of whom he writes in the 'Grace abounding' 
with such exquisite tenderness, died before her father. His chil- 
dren, John, Thomas, and Elizabeth by his first wife, and Sarah 
and Joseph by his second wife, survived him. His heroic wife 
lived only a year and a half after him, and died early in 1691. The 
only known representatives of Bunyan are the descendants of his 
youngest daughter Sarah. In 1686, two years before her father's 
death, she had married her fellow-parishioner, William Browne, 
and her descendants form a rather numerous and widespread clan. 

Bunyan's personal appearance is thus described by a contem- 
porary: 'He was tall of stature, strong-boned though not cor- 
pulent, somewhat of a ruddy face with sparkHng eyes, wearing his 
hair on his upper lip after the old British fashion ; his hair reddish, 
but in his latter days had sprinkled with grey; his nose well-set, but 
not declining or bending, and his mouth moderately large, his fore- 
head something high, and his habit always plain and modest.' 
Another contemporary writes: 'His countenance was grave and 
sedate, and did so to the life discover the inward frame of his heart, 
that it was convincing to the beholders, and did strike something 



THE LIFE OF JOHN BUN VAN 42 1 

of awe into them that had nothing of the fear of God.' A third 
thus describes his manner and bearing: 'He appeared in coun- 
tenance to be of a stern and rough temper, but in his conversation 
mild and affable, not given to loquacity or much discourse in com- 
pany, unless some urgent occasion required it, observing never to 
boast of himself in his parts, but rather seem low in his own eyes, 
and submit himself to the judgment of others.' 

The works left in manuscript at Bunyan's death were given to 
the world by his devoted friend and admirer, the good, simple- 
minded combmaker by London Bridge, Charles Doe, who soon 
after his decease set about a folio edition of his collected works 
as ' the best work he could do for God.' The first volume, pub- 
lished in 1692, contained ten of these posthumous books, most of 
which had been prepared for the press by Bunyan himself. These 
were followed by the 'Heavenly Footman,' one of the most char- 
acteristic of Bunyan's works, published by Doe in 1698, and by 
the 'Account of his Imprisonment,' that invaluable supplement 
to his biography, which was not given to the world till 1765. Doe's 
second intended foho was never published. The first complete 
collected edition of Bunyan's works, containing twenty-seven in 
addition to the twenty previously published by Doe, appeared in 
1736, edited by Samuel Wilson of the Barbican. A third issue of 
the collected works was published in two volumes folio in 1767, 
with a preface by George Whitefield. Other editions of the whole 
works are that by Alexander Hogg, in six volumes 8vo, in 1780; 
that by Mr. G. Offor, in three volumes imperial 8vo, in 1853, 
revised in 1862 ; and that by the Rev. H. Stebbing, in four volumes 
imperial 8vo, in 1859. 

The following is a list of Bunyan's works, arranged in chro- 
nological succession, based on that drawn up by Charles Doe and 
annexed to the first issue of the 'Heavenly Footman' in 1698. 
The full titles are not given, which in some cases extend to ten or 
a dozen fines: i. 'Some Gospel Truths opened,' 1656. 2. 'A 
Vindication of " Some Gospel Truths opened," ' same year. 3- ' A 
few Sighs from Hell, or the Groans of a Damned Soul,' 1658. 
4. 'The Doctrine of the Law and Grace unfolded,' 1659. All 
the preceding were published previous to his imprisonment. The 
first book written by him in prison was in verse: 5. 'Profitable 



422 EDMUND V ENABLES 

Meditations, fitted to Man's different Conditions. In nine par- 
ticulars' (no date). 6. 'I will pray with the Spirit and with the 
Understanding also,' 1663. 7. 'Christian Behaviour; being 
the Fruits of True Christianity,' 1663. 8, 9, 10. 'The Four Last 
Things,' 'Ebal and Gerizim,' and 'Prison Meditations.' All 
in verse, and published in one volume. The date of the first edi- 
tion is not known. 11. 'The Holy City,' 1665. 12. 'The 
Resurrection of the Dead and Eternal Judgment,' 1665. 
13. 'Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners,' 1666. 14. 'De- 
fence of the Doctrine of Justification by Faith,' 1672. 15. ' Con- 
fession of Faith,' 1672. These two were the last books published 
by him in prison. His release was speedily followed by: 
16. 'Difference of Judgment about Water Baptism no Bar to 
Communion,' 1673. 17. 'Peaceable Principles and True' (a 
rejoinder to attacks on the preceding work), 1674. 18. 'Repro- 
bation asserted, or the Doctrine of Eternal Election promiscuously 
handled' (no date). This work, though accepted by Charles Doe 
and inserted by him in the catalogue of Bunyan's works, and in- 
cluded by Hogg and Offor in their collected editions, is rejected 
by Mr. Brown on internal evidence of style and substance, but 
hardly perhaps on sufficient grounds. 19. ' Light for them that 
sit in Darkness,' 1675. 20. 'Instruction for the Ignorant, or a 
Salve to heal that great want of knowledge which so much reigns 
in Old and Young,' 1675. A 'Catechism for Children,' written 
in prison, but not published till after his release. 21. ' Saved by 
Grace,' 1675. 22. 'The Strait Gate, or the great Difficulty of 
going to Heaven,' 1676. This is an expansion of a sermon on 
Luke xiii. 24, preached by Bunyan after his release. 23. 'The 
Pilgrim's Progress,' 1678. Two other editions with large addi- 
tions appeared in the same and the following year, evidencing its 
rapid popularity. 24. ' Come and welcome to Jesus Christ,' 
1678. The expansion of a sermon on John vi. 37. 25. 'A 
Treatise of the Fear of God,' 1679. 26. 'The Life and Death 
of Mr. Badman,' 1680. 27. 'The Holy War,' 1682. 28. 'The 
Barren Fig Tree, or the Doom and Downfall of the Fruitless 
Professors,' 1682. 29. 'The Greatness of the Soul,' 1683. 
Originally a sermon preached at Pinners' Hall, expanded. 30. 'A 
Case of Conscience resolved,' 1683. A curious little tract on the 



THE LIFE OF JOHN BUN Y AN 



423 



propriety of women meeting separately for prayer, &c., ' without 
their men/ 31. 'Seasonable Counsel or Advice to Sufferers,' 

1684. 32. 'A Holy Life the Beauty of Christianity,' 1684. 
33. 'A Caution to stir up to Watch against Sin,' 1684. 
A half-sheet broadside poem in sixteen stanzas. 34. ' The 
second part of the Pilgrim's Progress,' 1684. 35. Ques- 
tions about the Nature and Perpetuity of the Seventh- 
day Sabbath,' 1685. 36. 'The Pharisee and the Publican,' 

1685. 37. 'A Book for Boys and Girls, or Country Rhymes for 
Children,' in verse; or, as in later editions, 'Divine Emblems, or 
Temporal Things spiritualised,' 1686. 38. 'The Jerusalem 
Sinner saved, or Good News for the Vilest of Men,' 1688. 
39. 'The Work of Jesus Christ as an Advocate,' 1688. 40. 'Dis- 
course of the Building, Nature, Excellency, and Government of 
the House of God,' 1688. A poetical composition in twelve 
divisions. 41. 'The Water of Life,' 1688. 42. 'Solomon's 
Temple spiritualised, or Gospel-light fetcht out of the Temple 
at Jerusalem,' in seventy particulars, 1688. 43. ' The Acceptable 
Sacrifice, or the Excellency of a Broken Heart,' the proofs of 
which were corrected by the author on his deathbed and published, 
with a preface, after his decease by his friend George Cokayn, 
21 Sept. 1688. 44. His 'Last Sermon,' on John i. 13, preached 
on 19 Aug. 1688, two days before he sickened, and about twelve 
days before his death, was published from notes shortly after his 
decease. The 'Dying Sayings,' which appeared immediately 
after his death, bears internal evidence of being 'a compilation 
from various sources made in haste for some publisher with a 
shrewd eye to business and trading on the interest attaching to Bun- 
yan's name' (Brown). Posthumous publications. — Ten of these 
were contained in the folio edition of 1692, which had been pre- 
pared for the press by Bunyan himself : 45. ' An Exposition of the 
Ten first Chapters of Genesis and part of the Eleventh.' A frag- 
ment of an intended continuous commentary on the Holy 
Scriptures. 46. 'Justification by imputed Righteousness.' 
47. 'Paul's Departure and Crown,' an expansion of a sermon on 
2 Tim. iv. 6-8. 48. 'Israel's Hope encouraged,' a discourse on 
Ps. cxxx. 7. 49. 'The Desires of the Righteous granted,' a ser- 
mon on Prov. X. 24 and xi. 23. 50. 'The Saint's Privilege and 



424 EDMUND V ENABLES 

Profit,' a treatise on prayer based on Heb. iv. i6. 51. ' Christ a 
Compleat Saviour,' a discourse on the intercession of Christ, on 
Heb. vii. 25. 52. 'The Saint's Knowledge of Christ's Love,' 
an exposition of St. Paul's prayer, Ephes. iii. 18-19. 53- 'The 
House of the Forest of Lebanon,' a discourse on i Kings vii. 2, 
in which by a fanciful and baseless analogy he makes this palace 
a type of the church under persecution. 54. 'Antichrist and her 
Ruin, and the Slaying of the Witnesses,' a work which singularly 
enough breathes the most profound loyalty to the sovereign, though 
that sovereign was then doing all in his power to establish popery. 
To these ten posthumous works must be added: 55. 'The 
Heavenly Footman,' a discourse on i Cor. ix. 24, bought of Bun- 
yan's eldest son, John, in 1691 by Charles Doe, and published by 
him in 1698. 56. The 'Relation of his Imprisonment,' which 
was not given to the world till 1765, a hundred years after it was 
written in Bedford gaol. Neither 57. 'The Christian Dialogue,' 
nor 58. ' The Pocket Concordance,' enumerated by Charles Doe, 
'though diligently sought,' has been discovered. 59. The 
' Scriptural Poems,' in which a far from unsuccessful attempt has 
been made to versify the histories of Joseph, Samson, Ruth, the 
Sermon on the Mount, and the Epistle of St. James, are regarded 
as spurious by Mr. Brown on the ground that they were unknown to 
Charles Doe and were not published till twelve years after Bun- 
yan's death, and then by one Blare, who issued other certainly 
spurious works in Bunyan's name. The internal evidence he also 
regards as unfavourable to their genuineness : 'There is but little 
to remind us of Bunyan's special verse.' Mr. Froude's verdict 
on this point is altogether different: 'The "Book of Ruth" and 
the "History of Joseph " done into blank verse are really beautiful 
idylls, which if we found in the collected works of a poet laureate 
we should consider that a difficult task had been accomplished 
successfully, and the original grace completely preserved.' 



THE LIFE OF SIR RICHARD STEELE 425 

THE LIFE OF SIR RICHARD STEELE 

AUSTIN DOBSON 
[From the Dictionary of National Biography. '\ 

Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729), essayist, dramatist, and 
politician, was born in Dublin in March 1672 (N.S.), and was 
baptised at St. Bridget's Church on the 12th of that month. He 
was consequently some weeks older than Joseph Addison, who 
was born on i May following. Steele's father, also Richard 
Steele, was a well-to-do Dublin attorney, who had a country 
house at Mountain (Monkstown), and was at one time sub- 
sheriff at Tipperary. He married, in 1670, an Irish widow 
named Elinor Symes (or Sims), born Sheyles. When his son 
was 'not quite five years of age' {Tatler, No. 181), the elder 
Steele died, and of Mrs. Steele we know nothing but what the 
same authority tells us, namely, that she was 'a very beautiful 
woman, of a noble spirit.' She cannot have long survived her 
husband, since Steele seems to have passed early into the care of 
an uncle, Henry Gascoigne, private secretary to James Butler, 
first duke of Ormonde, by whose influence the boy in November 
1684 obtained a nomination to the Charterhouse, of which the 
duke was a governor. Two years later Addison entered the 
same school, and a Hfelong friendship began between the pair. 

In November 1689 Steele was 'elected to the university' of 
Oxford, whither Addison had already preceded him. On 13 
March 1690 he matriculated at Christ Church, and on 27 Aug. 
1 69 1 he became a postmaster of Merton, his college tutor being 
Dr. Welbore Ellis, afterwards mentioned in the ' Christian Hero.' 
He continued his friendship with Addison, then a demy at Mag- 
dalen, and appears to have visited him in his home at Lichfield 
(Preface to the Drummer, 1722, and Tatler, No. 235). While at 
college he enjoyed some reputation as a scholar. He dabbled 
also in letters, composing a comedy which, by the advice of a 
friend, Mr. Parker of Merton, he burned. Then suddenly, in 1694, 
much to the regret of 'the whole Society,' he left Merton with- 
out taking a degree, and entered the army as a cadet or gentle- 



426 AUSTIN DOBSON 

man-volunteer in the second troop of life-guards, at that time 
under the command of the second duke of Ormonde, thereby 
losing, as he tells us in 'The Theatre,' No. ii, 'the succession to 
a very good estate in the county of Wexford in Ireland.' What 
this estate was his biographers have failed to discover, although 
it has been conjectured that, if it existed at all, it belonged to a 
relative of his mother. 

On 28 Dec. 1694 Queen Mary died, and among the mourn- 
ing bards who, in black-framed foHo, celebrated her funeral was 
Steele, whose verses, described as 'by a Gentleman of the Army,' 
and entitled 'The Procession,' were, doubtless from motives of 
poHcy, dedicated to John, Lord Cutts, who had just become 
colonel of the 2nd or Coldstream regiment of foot-guards. Lord 
Cutts took Steele into his household, and in 1696-7 employed him 
as his confidential agent or secretary (cf. Carleton, Memoirs, 
1728, ch. iii.). Ultimately he gave him a standard in his own 
regiment. By 1700 Steele is referred to as 'Captain,' and there 
is also evidence that he was in friendly relations with Sedley, 
Congreve, Vanbrugh, Garth, and other contemporary wits. In 
the same year (16 June), ' one or two of his acquaintance' hav- 
ing 'thought fit to misuse him and try their valour upon him' 
{Apology for himself and his Writings, 17 14, p. 80), he fought a 
duel in Hyde Park with a Captain Kelly, whom he wounded 
dangerously, but not mortally (Luttrell, Diary, iv. 657). This 
occurrence made a serious impression upon him, and laid the 
foundation of that dislike of duelHng which he ever afterwards 
exhibited. In all probability it is connected with his next liter- 
ary effort, the treatise called 'The Christian Hero: an Argu- 
ment proving that no Principles but those of Religion are suffi- 
cient to make a great Man.' This (which was also dedicated 
to Lord Cutts) was published by Tonson in April 1701, a second 
and enlarged edition following on 19 July. Steele's own account 
of this work in his ' Apology,' p. 80, is that, finding the military 
life 'exposed to much irregularity,' he wrote it 'to fix upon his 
own mind a strong impression of virtue and religion, in opposi- 
tion to a stronger propensity towards unwarrantable pleasures,' 
which admission has probably been construed too literally (cf. 
Biogr. Brit. 1763, vol. vi. pt. i. p. 3823). ' The Christian Hero ' 



THE LIFE OF SIR RICHARD STEELE 427 

vvas at first designed solely for his private use, but finding ' that 
this secret admonition was too weak,' he ultimately 'printed the 
book with his name,' as a 'standing testimony against himself.' 
It differs considerably both in style and teaching from the ordi- 
nary devotional manual, and without much straining may be 
said to exhibit definite indications of that faculty for essay-writ- 
ing which was to be so signally developed in the 'Spectator,' 
in which indeed certain portions of it were afterwards embodied. 
Upon his colleagues at the Tower Guard (whence its Preface is 
dated) its effect was what might have been anticipated. ' From 
being thought no undelightful companion, he was soon reck- 
oned a disagreeable fellow. . . . Thus he found himself slighted, 
instead of being encouraged, for his declarations as to Religion, 
and it was now incumbent upon him to enliven his character, for 
which reason he writ the comedy called " The Funeral," in which 
(tho' full of incidents that move laughter) virtue and vice appear 
as they ought to do' {Apology, p. 80). 

'The Funeral; or, Grief- a-la-Mode,' was acted at Drury Lane 
late in 1701, and was published in book form in December of that 
year, with a dedication to the Countess of Albemarle. The 
principal parts were taken by Gibber, Wilks, and Mrs. Verbrug- 
gen, and the championship of the author's military friends helped 
to secure its success. 'With some particulars enlarged upon to 
his advantage' (by which must probably be understood certain 
politic references to William III in the ' Christian Hero ') , it also 
obtained for him the notice of the king. ' His [Steele's] name, to be 
provided for, was in the last table-book ever worn by the glorious 
and immortal William the Third' {ih. p. 81). His majesty, how- 
ever, died on 8 March 1702, and Steele's fortunes were yet to 
make. In the preceding month he had become a captain in Lord 
Lucas's newly formed regiment of foot (Aitken, Life, i. 79) ; and 
in December 1703 he produced at Drury Lane a second comedy, 
'The Lying Lover; or, the Ladies Friendship,' which was pub- 
lished on 26 Jan. 1704. This piece was based upon the 'Men- 
teur' of Corneille, and differed from its predecessor, 'The Fu- 
neral,' in that it was a more deliberate attempt to carry out upon 
the stage those precepts which, a few years earlier, Jeremy Collier 
had advocated in his 'Short View of the Profaneness and Im- 



428 AUSTIN DOBSON 

morality of the English Stage.' Among other things it contained 
an indictment of duelling. Upon its first appearance it ran but 
six nights. Its author described it years afterwards as ' damned 
for its piety' {Apology, p. 48), but it was also inferior to its prede- 
cessor. Steele nevertheless set to work upon a third effort, ' The 
Tender Husband; or, the Accomplished Fools.' This, a frank 
imitation of Moliere's 'Sicilien,' was brought out at Drury Lane 
in April 1705. It was better than the ' Lying Lover,' but scarcely 
more successful, though Addison (now back from Italy) wrote 
its prologue, and added 'many applauded [though now undis- 
tinguishable] strokes' to the piece itself {Spectator, No. 555). 
In May, when the play was printed, it was dedicated to Addison 
'as no improper memorial of an inviolable friendship.' 

Soon after the production of 'The Tender Husband,' which, 
for several years, closed Steele's career as a playwright, he married. 
His wife (for particulars respecting whom we are indebted to the 
researches of Mr. Aitken) was a widow named Margaret Stretch, 
nee Ford, the possessor of more or less extensive estates in Bar- 
bados, which she had inherited from a brother then recently dead. 
It has been also hinted that she was elderly, and that her fortune 
was the main attraction to her suitor, whose indefinite means had 
about this time been impaired by futile researches for the philoso- 
pher's stone {New Atalantis and Town Talk, No. 4). The 
marriage must have taken place not long after March 1705, when 
Mrs. Stretch took out letters of administration to her West Indian 
property, which is said to have been worth 850^. per annum. It 
was, however, encumbered with a debt of 3,000/., besides legacies, 
&c. In December 1706 Mrs. Steele died, and Steele, in his turn, 
administered to her estate in January 1707. During the brief 
period of his married life — in August 1706 — he had beconie 
a gentleman waiter to Prince George of Denmark (salary 100/. 
yearly, 'not subject to taxes'), and in April or May 1707, on the 
recommendation of Arthur Mainwaring, he was appointed by 
Harley gazetteer, at a further annual salary of 300/., which was, 
however, liable to a tax of 45/. 'The writer of the "Gazette" 
now,' says Hearne in May 1707, 'is Captain Steel, who is the 
author of several romantic things, and is accounted an ingenious 
man.' Steele seems to have honestly endeavoured to comply 



THE LIFE OF SIR RICHARD STEELE 429 

with 'the rule observed by all ministries, to keep the paper very 
innocent and very insipid' {Apology, p. 81) ; but the rule was by 
no means an easy one to abide by. His inclinations still leaned 
towards the stage. Already, in March 1703, he had received 
from Rich of Drury Lane part payment for an unfinished comedy 
called 'The Election of Goatham' (Aitken, i. 112), a subject 
also essayed by Gay and Mrs. Centlivre; and in January 1707 he 
was evidently meditating the completion of this or some other 
piece when his wife's death interrupted his work {Muses Mercury, 
January 1707). But his only definite Hterary production between 
May 1705 and 1707 was a 'Prologue' to the university of Oxford, 
published in July 1706. 

Before he had held the post of gazetteer many months he mar- 
ried again. The lady, whose acquaintance he had made at his 
first wife's funeral, was a Miss, or Mistress, Mary Scurlock, the 
daughter and heiress of Jonathan Scurlock, deceased, of Llangun- 
nor in Carmarthen, and, according to Mrs. Manley {New Atalan- 
tis, 6th ed. vol. iv.), ' a cry'd up beauty.' For reasons now obscure, 
the marriage was kept a secret, but it is supposed to have taken 
place on 9 Sept. 1707, soon after which time Steele set up house in 
Bury Street, or (as his letters give it) 'third door, right hand, 
turning out of Jermyn Street.' This was a locality described by 
contemporary advertisements as in convenient proximity 'to St. 
James's Church, Chapel, Park, Palace, Coffee and Chocolate 
Houses,' and was obviously within easy distance of the court and 
Steele's office, the Cockpit at Whitehall. Both before and after 
marriage Steele kept up an active correspondence with his 
'Charmer' and 'Inspirer,' names which, later on, are ex- 
changed, not inappropriately, for 'Ruler' and 'Absolute Govern- 
ess.' Mrs. Steele preserved all her husband's letters, over four 
hundred of which John Nichols the antiquary presented in 1787 
to the British Museum (Add. MSS. 5145, A, B, and C), where 
they afford a curious and an instructive study to the inquirer. 
The lady, though genuinely attached to her husband, was im- 
perious and exacting; the gentleman ardent and devoted, but 
incurably erratic and impulsive. His correspondence reflects 
these characteristics in all their variations, and, if it often does 
credit to his heart and understanding, it as often suggests that 



430 



AUSTIN DOBSON 



his easy geniality and irregular good nature must have made 
him 'gey ill to live with.' It was a part of his sanguine tempera- 
ment to overestimate his means (Aitken, passim). Hence he 
is perpetually in debt and difficulties (he borrowed i,ooo/. of 
Addison, which he repaid; letter of 20 Aug. 1708); hence 
always (like Gay) on the alert for advancement. In October 
1708 the death of Prince George deprived him of his post as 
gentleman waiter, and, though he had previously been seeking 
an appointment as usher of the privy chamber, and almost 
immediately afterwards tried for the under-secretaryship rendered 
vacant by Addison's departure for Ireland as secretary of state to 
Lord Wharton, the lord-lieutenant, he was successful in neither 
attempt. All these things were but unpromising accompaniments 
to a chariot and pair for his 'dear Prue,' with a country box (in 
the shadow of the palace) at Hampton Wick ; and it seems certain 
that towards the close of 1708 an execution for arrears of rent 
was put into the Bury Street house. In the following March his 
daughter Elizabeth was born, having for godfathers Addison and 
Wortley Montagu. A month later, without premonition of any 
kind, Steele inaugurated his career as an essayist by establishing 
the'Tatler.' 

The first number of the 'Tatler,' a single folio sheet, was issued 
on 12 April 1709, and it came out three times a week. The first- 
four numbers were given away gratis; after this the price was a 
penny. The supposed author was one 'Isaac Bickerstaff,' the 
pseudonym borrowed by Swift from a shopdoor to demolish John 
Partridge the astrologer. The paper's name, said Steele ironi- 
cally, was invented in honour of the fair sex (No. i), and it pro- 
fessed in general to treat, as its motto for many numbers indi- 
cated, of 'Quicquid agunt homines,' dating its accounts of gal- 
lantry, pleasure, and entertainment from White's coffee-house, 
its poetry from Will's, its learning from the Grecian,and its foreign 
and domestic intelligence (which Steele hoped to supplement out 
of his own official gazette) from the St. James's. Whatever came 
under none of these heads was dated from ' My own apartment.' 
As time went on the project developed, and when the first volume 
was dedicated to Mainwaring (who, as already stated, had helped 
Steele to his gazetteership) , it was already claimed for the new 



THE LIFE OF SIR RICHARD STEELE 431 

venture that it had aimed at ' exposing the false arts of life, pulling 
off the disguises of cunning, vanity, and affectation, and recom- 
mending a general simplicity in our dress, our discourse, and our 
behaviour' (see also Tatler, No. 89). In this larger task Steele 
was no doubt aided by Addison, who, playing but an inconspicuous 
part in the first volume (his earliest contribution was to No. 18), 
gave very substantial aid in its successors ; and from a hotch-pot 
of news and town gossip the ' Tatler ' became a collection of indi- 
vidual essays on social and general topics. In the preface to the 
fourth and final volume, Steele, with a generosity which never 
failed him, rendered grateful testimony to his anonymous coad- 
jutor's assistance. In thanking Addison for his services as 'a 
gentleman who will be nameless,' he goes on to say: 'This good 
office [of contributing] he performed with such force of genius, 
humour, wit, and learning, that I fared like a distressed Prince 
who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid ; I was undone by my 
auxiHary; when I had once called him in, I could not subsist 
without dependence on him.' 

After a career, prolonged to 271 numbers, about 188 of which 
were from Steele's own pen, the ' Tatler' came to a sudden end on 
2 Jan. 1711. The ostensible reason for this was that the public 
had penetrated the editor's disguise, and that the edifying pre- 
cepts of the fictitious ' Mr. Bickerstaff ' were less efficacious when 
they came to be habitually identified in the public mind with the 
faUible personality of Steele himself {Tatler, No. 271). But it has 
been shrewdly surmised that there were other and more pressing 
reasons (which Steele also hints at) for its abrupt cessation. In 
addition to his office of gazetteer, he had been made in January 
1 7 10 a commissioner of stamps, an office which increased his 
income by 300/. per annum. When in August of the same year 
Harley became head of the government, certain papers satirising 
him had recently made their appearance in the ' Tatler ; ' and in 
the following October Steele lost his gazetteership. That he was 
not deprived of his commissionership of stamps as well has been 
ascribed to the intervention of Swift, whose friends were in power 
{Journal to Stella, 15 Dec. 17 10), and with this forbearance of the 
ministry the termination of the 'Tatler' is also supposed to be 
obscurely connected. ' What I find is the least excusable part of 



432 



AUSTIN DOBSON 



this work,' says Steele in the final number quoted above, 'is that 
I have in some places in it touched upon matters which concern 
both the church and state.' But however this may be, the ' Tatler ' 
was not long without a successor. Two months later (i March) 
began the 'Spectator,' professing in its first number 'an exact 
neutrality between the whigs and tories,' and setting in motion 
almost from the first that famous club of which Sir Roger de 
Coverley is the most prominent member. The first sketch (in 
No. 2) of this immortal friendly gathering was undoubtedly due 
to Steele's inventive alertness. But Addison, working at leisure 
upon his friend's rapid and hasty outline, gradually filled in the 
features of the figure whose fortunes to-day constitute the chief 
interest of the periodical. Diversified in addition by the critical 
essays of Addison and the domestic sketches of Steele, the ' Spec- 
tator' proceeded with unabated vivacity to its five hundred and 
fifty-fifth number and seventh volume, surviving even that baleful 
Stamp Act of August 171 2 (10 Anne, cap. 19) which nipped so 
many of its contemporaries. Out of the whole of the papers 
Addison wrote 274 and Steele 236. As before, no satisfactory 
explanation is forthcoming for the termination of the enterprise, 
the success of which is admitted. Towards the end of its career, 
the 'Spectator' was selling ten thousand per week, and Steele 
himself says that the first four volumes had obtained it a further 
sale of nine thousand copies in book form (No. 555). What is 
clear is that Addison's assistance was still anonymous, and Steele's 
gratitude to him as strong as ever. 'I am indeed,' he wrote, 
'much more proud of his long-continued friendship than I should 
be of the fame of being thought the author of any writings he is 
capable of producing. ... I heartily wish that what I have done 
here were as honorary to that sacred name [of friendship] as learn- 
ing, wit, and humanity render those pieces which I have taught the 
reader now to distinguish for his' — i.e. by the letters C, L, I, O. 
During the progress of the 'Spectator,' Steele had made his 
first definite plunge as a politician by 'The Englishman's Thanks 
to the Duke of Marlborough.' This appeared in January 1712, 
just after the duke had been deprived of all his offices, a catas- 
trophe which also prompted Swift's opposition 'Fable of Midas.' 
There were other signs of political disquiet in some of Steele's sub- 



THE LIFE OF SIR RICHARD STEELE 433 

sequent contributions to the 'Spectator' ('he has been mighty 
impertinent of late,' wrote Swift to Stella in July 1712); and 
although in the new periodical, which he began in March 17 13, 
he made profession of abstinence from matters of state, only seven 
days before he had put forth a ' Letter to Sir Miles Wharton con- 
cerning Occasional Peers.' In the 'Guardian' he philosophi- 
cally declared himself to be, with regard to government of the 
church, a tory ; and with regard to the state, a whig. But he was, 
in Johnson's phrase, 'too hot for neutral topics;' and before the 
middle of 1713 he was actively embroiled with the 'Examiner,' 
the casus belli being an attack that tory paper (behind which was 
the formidable figure of Swift) had made in its No. 41 upon Lord 
Nottingham's daughter, Lady Charlotte Finch, the Nottinghams 
having deserted to the whigs. On 4 June he resigned his com- 
missionership of stamps, and his pension as Prince George's 
gentleman-in-waiting, and entered the lists of faction with an 
indictment of the government upon the vexed question of the 
postponed demolition, under the treaty of Utrecht, of the Dunkirk 
fortifications. 'The British nation,' he declared, 'expects the 
demolition of Dunkirk' {Guardian, No. 128). The 'Examiner' 
retorted by charging him with disloyalty. Steele rejoined (22 
Sept.) by a pamphlet entitled 'The Importance of Dunkirk con- 
sider'd,' addressed to the bailiff of Stockbridge, Hampshire, for 
which town in August he had been elected M. P. Swift answered 
by a bitterly contemptuous 'Importance of the Guardian con- 
sider'd.' Before this came out, however, on 31 Oct. the 'Guard- 
ian' had been dead for a month, and had been succeeded on 6 Oct. 
by the 'Englishman,' 'a sequel' of freer political scope. 

By this time Steele was in the thick of party strife. In Novem- 
ber a scurrilous 'Character' of him 'by Toby Abel's kinsman' 
{i.e. Edward King, nephew of Abel Roper of the 'Postboy') was 
issued by some of Swift's 'under spur-leathers,' and early in 
January 17 14 Swift himself followed suit with a paraphrase of 
Horace (ii. i), in which it was suggested that when he (Steele) 
had settled the affairs of Europe, he might find time to finish 
his long-threatened (but unidentified) play. Shortly afterwards 
(19 Jan.) Steele put forth another widely circulated pamphlet, 
'The Crisis,' in which, aided by the counsels of Addison, Hoadly, 

2F 



434 



AUSTIN DOBSON 



William Moore of the Inner Temple, and others, he reviewed the 
whole question of the Hanoverian succession. Swift was promptly 
in the field {27, Feb.) with the 'Public Spirit of the Whigs,' one of 
his most masterly efforts in this way; and when Steele took his 
seat in parliament he found that his doom was sealed, and on 12 
March he was formally accused of uttering seditious libels. 
Supported by Walpole, Addison, General Stanhope, and others 
of his party, he spoke in his own defence for some three hours, 
and spoke well; but what he afterwards called, with pardonable 
energy, 'the insolent and unmanly sanction of a majority' {Apology, 
p. xvi) prevailed, and on 18 March 17 14 he was expelled the House 
of Commons. 

In these circumstances he turned once more to his proper vo- 
cation — letters. Even at the end of 17 14 he had contrived to 
issue a volume of 'Poetical Miscellanies,' dedicated to Congreve, 
and numbering Pope, Gay, and Parnell among its contributors. 
In this he reprinted his own 'Procession' of 1695. The short- 
lived 'Englishman' came to an end in February 17 14, and was 
immediately succeeded by the 'Lover' (25 Feb.). In April came 
the 'Reader.' Both of these were dropped in May. In No. 6 
of the latter Steele announced that he was preparing a 'History 
of the War in Flanders,' a subject for which he was not without 
qualifications. But the project came to nothing. He produced, 
however, several pamphlets: the 'Romish Ecclesiastical History 
of late Years' (25 May), a 'Letter concerning the Bill for pre- 
venting the Growth of Schism' (3 June), and another on Dunkirk 
(2 July). Then, on i Aug., Queen Anne died. On 18 Sept. 
George I landed at Greenwich, and the tide turned. The cham- 
pion of the Hanoverian succession was speedily appointed J. P., 
deputy-lieutenant for the county of Middlesex, and surveyor of 
the royal stables at Hampton Court. What was better still (and 
more definitely lucrative), he obtained the position of supervisor 
of the Theatre Royal of Drury Lane, the license of which had 
expired with the queen's death. The license was shortly after- 
wards converted into a patent, and Steele in this manner came 
into receipt of 1,000/. per annum. 

Henceforward his life grows more and more barren of notable 
incident. In the same month in which his honours came upon 



THE LIFE OF SIR RICHARD STEELE 435 

him he published the compilation known as 'The Ladies' Library,' 
volume iii. of which was dedicated, with much grace and tender- 
ness, to his wife. He also vindicated his past proceedings with 
considerable spirit in the pamphlet entitled 'Mr. Steele's Apology 
for himself and his Writings' (22 Oct.), citations from which have 
already been made. On 2 Feb. 171 5 he was elected M. P. for 
Boroughbridge, Yorkshire, and two months later (8 April) the 
presentation of an address to the king procured him a knighthood. 
During the next few years he continued as of old to busy himself 
with projects, literary and otherwise. He established in Villiers 
Street, York Buildings, Strand, a kind of periodical conversazione 
called the 'Censorium,' which he inaugurated on his majesty's 
birthday (28 May) by a grand banquet and entertainment, to 
which Tickell supplied the prologue and Addison the epilogue 
{Town Talk, No. 4). He wrote another overgrown pamphlet on 
the Roman catholic religion (13 May), began a new volume of 
the 'Englishman' (11 July to 21 Nov.), and established and aban- 
doned three more periodicals, 'Town Talk' (17 Dec), 'The Tea- 
Table' (2 Feb. 1 7 16), and 'Chit Chat' (6 March). In June he 
was appointed one of the thirteen commissioners for forfeited 
estates in Scotland, the salary being 1,000/. per annum. Two 
years later, in June 17 18, he obtained a patent for a project called 
the 'Fish pool,' a plan (which proved unsuccessful) for bringing 
salmon alive from Ireland in a well-boat. Then, in December 
1 7 18, he lost his 'dear and honoured wife.' Lady Steele died on 
the 26th, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Early in the 
succeeding year Steele's evil star involved him in a painful con- 
troversy with his lifelong friend Addison. He started a periodical 
called the 'Plebeian' (14 March) to denounce Lord Sunderland's 
bill for limiting the power of creating new peers. Addison 
replied acrimoniously in the 'Old Whig,' and, what was worse, 
died so soon afterwards (17 June) that the breach thus created 
was never healed, while Steele's opposition to the measure (which 
was dropped) led indirectly to the withdrawal by the Duke of 
Newcastle in January 1720 of the Drury Lane patent. With 
this last occurrence is connected the establishment of another, 
and perhaps the most interesting, of his later periodical efforts, 
as it was also the last, 'The Theatre' (2 Jan. to April 1720). 



436 AUSTIN DOBSON 

His next publications were two pamphlets, ' The Crisis of Prop- 
erty' (i Feb.) and its sequel 'A Nation a Family' (27 Feb.), 
in which he warmly combated the South Sea mania. In 1721 
his former ally, Walpole, became chancellor of the exchequer, and 
the Drury Lane patent was restored (2 May). In December of 
the same year he published a second edition of Addison's ' Drum- 
mer,' in the preface to which, addressed to Congreve, he vindi- 
cated himself against the aspersions cast upon him in the edition 
of Addison's works, which Tickell had put forth in the preceding 
October. In March 1722 he became member for WendoveF, 
Buckinghamshire. Then, in November of the same year, he 
produced at Drury Lane his last comedy, 'The Conscious Lovers,' 
which, notwithstanding that (in Parson Adams's words) it con- 
tained 'some things almost solemn enough for a sermon,' proved 
a hit, and brought its writer five hundred guineas from George I, 
to whom it was dedicated. Its groundwork was the 'Andria' 
of Terence, and it attacked duelling. Besides the 'Conscious 
Lovers,' Steele began, but did not finish, two other pieces, 'The 
School of Action' and 'The Gentleman,' fragments of which were 
printed by Nichols in 1809. Lawsuits and money difficulties 
thickened upon him in his later days, and in 1724, in pursuance 
of an honourable arrangement with his creditors, and not, as 
Swift wrote, 'from perils of a hundred gaols,' he retired first to 
Hereford, and finally to Carmarthen, where he lived chiefly at 
Tygwyn, a farmhouse overlooking the Towy. In Victor's ' Origi- 
nal Letters' (1776, i. 330) there is a pretty picture of his still 
unabated kindliness of nature. Broken and paralytic, he is shown 
delightedly watching from his invalid's chair the country folk at 
their sports on a summer evening, and writing an order upon his 
agent for a prize of a new gown to the best dancer. He died at a 
house in King Street, Carmarthen, on i Sept. 1729, aged 58, and 
was buried in St. Peter's Church, where in 1876 a mural tablet 
was erected to him. There is also an earlier memorial to him at 
his old estate of Llangunnor. Two only of his four children 
survived him: Mary, who died in the year following his death; 
and Elizabeth, the eldest daughter, who ultimately married a 
Welsh judge (afterwards the third Lord Trevor of Bromham). 
His two sons, Richard and Eugene, died in 17 16 and 1723 re- 



THE LIFE OF SIR RICHARD STEELE 43^ 

spectively. He had also a natural daughter, known as Miss 
Ousley, who married a Welsh gentleman named Stynston. About 
1 7 18 it seems to have been proposed to marry her to Richard 
Savage the poet. 

There are three principal portraits of Steele, all mentioned by 
himself (Theatre, No. 2) in answer to an attack made upon him 
by John Dennis the critic. The first, by Jonathan Richardson, 
now in the National Portrait Gallery, was executed in 17 12, and 
gives us the Steele of the 'Spectator.' It was engraved in the 
following year by J. Smith, and later by Bartolozzi and Meadows. 
The second, by Sir Godfrey Kneller, was painted shortly after- 
wards for the Kit-Cat Club (of which Steele was among the earlier 
members) , and exhibits him in one of the fine full-bottomed black 
periwigs he wore when he rode abroad (Drake, Essays, 18 14, i. 
179). This belongs to Mr. Baker of Bayfordbury, and has been 
engraved by Vertue, Simon, Faber, Houbraken, and others. The 
third, by Thornhill, is at Cobham Hall, and was reproduced in 
copper by Vertue in 1713, and by James Basire. In this Steele 
appears in a dressing-gown and a tasselled cap. The Richard- 
son, he tells us, makes him 'indolent,' the Kneller 'resolute,' the 
Thornhill 'thoughtful.' There is another reputed Kneller at 
Stationers' Hall ; and there is said to be a portrait of him when 
he was a commissioner in Scotland, by Michael Dahl. The 
Thornhill is the best known; the Kneller Kit-Cat is probably the 
best likeness. Sir Godfrey also executed a picture of Lady Steele, 
which does full justice to her good looks. It belongs to Mrs. 
Thomas of Moreb, Llandilo, Carmarthenshire, and figures as 
the frontispiece to vol. ii. of Mr. Aitken's 'Life.' 

As regards the written portraits of his character, Macaulay in 
his famous essay on Addison sought by deeply drawn lines to 
heighten the contrast between Steele and his colleague. Thack- 
eray softened the asperity of the likeness in his lecture (in the 
' EngHsh Humourists ') . Forster's vindicatory study in the ' Quar- 
terly' is not entirely sympathetic. That Steele was an undetected 
hypocrite and a sentimental debauchee is now no longer main- 
tained, although it cannot be denied that his will was often weaker 
than his purpose; that he was constitutionally improvident and 
impecunious; and that, like many of his contemporaries in that 



438 AUSTIN DOBSON 

hard-drinking century, he was far too easily seduced by his com- 
pliant good-fellowship into excess in wine. ' I shall not carry my 
humility so far as to call myself a vicious man/ he wrote in ' Tat- 
ler' No. 271, 'but must confess my life is at best but pardonable.' 
When so much is admitted, it is needless to charge the picture, 
though it may be added that, with all his faults, allowed and 
imputed, there is abundant evidence to prove that he was not 
only a doting husband and an affectionate father, but also a loyal 
friend and an earnest and unselfish patriot. As a literary man 
his claim upon posterity is readily stated. As a poet — even in 
that indulgent age of Anne — he cannot be classed; as a pam- 
phleteer he is plain-spoken and well-meaning, but straggling and 
ineffectual ; as a dramatist, despite his shrewd perceptive faculty 
and his laudable desire to purify the stage, his success is no more 
than respectable. In the brief species of essay, however, which he 
originated and developed — the essay of the 'Tatler' and its 
immediate successors — he is at home. Without ranking as a 
great stylist — his hand was too hasty for laboured form or finish, 
and he claimed and freely used the license of ' common speech ' — 
he was a master of that unembarrassed manner which (it has been 
well said) is the outcome of an unembarrassed matter. He writes, 
as a rule, less from his head than from his heart, to the warmth of 
which organ his rapid pen gives eager and emphatic expression. 
His humour is delightfully kindly and genial, his sympathies quick- 
springing and compassionate, his instincts uniformly on the side 
of what is generous, honest, manly, and of good report. ' He had 
a love and reverence of virtue,' said Pope; and many of his lay 
sermons are unrivalled in their kind. As the first painter of 
domesticity the modern novel owes him much, but the women of 
his own day owe him more. Not only did he pay them collec- 
tively a magnificent compliment when he wrote of Lady Elizabeth 
Hastings, that 'to love her was a liberal education' (Tatler, No. 
49) ; but in a time when they were treated by the wits with con- 
temptuous flattery or cynical irreverence, he sought to offer them 
a reasonable service of genuine respect which was immeasurably 
superior to those 'fulsome raptures, guilty impressions, senseless 
deifications and pretended deaths' with which (as he himself wrote 
in 'The Christian Hero') it was the custom of his contemporaries 
to insult their understandings. 



THE LIFE OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 439 

THE LIFE OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 

SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 
[From the Dictionary of National Biography. 1 

Johnson, Samuel (i 709-1 784), lexicographer, son of Michael 
Johnson, bookseller at Lichfield, by his wife Sarah (Ford), was 
born at Lichfield on 18 Sept. (N.S.) 1709, and was baptised 17 Sept. 
(i.e. 28 Sept. N.S.), according to the parish register {Gent. Mag. 
October 1829; cf. A. L. Reade's The Reades of Blackwood Hill 
. . . with account of Dr. Johnson's ancestry , 1906). The father, 
born in 1656, remembered the publication of ' Absalom and Achito- 
phel' in 168 1 (Johnson, Life of Dryden). He transmitted to his 
son a powerful frame and 'a vile melancholy.' Besides keep- 
ing his shop (now preserved as a public memorial) at Lichfield 
he sold books occasionally at Birmingham, at Uttoxeter, and at 
Ashby-de-la-Zouch. He was churchwarden in 1688, sheriff of 
Lichfield (then a county) in 1709, junior bailiff in 17 18, and senior 
bailiff in 1725. As became a bookseller in a cathedral town, he 
was a high churchman, and something of a Jacobite. Unbusiness- 
like habits or a speculation in the 'manufacture of parchment' 
brought him into difficulties. His wife, born in 1669 at King's 
Norton, Worcestershire, is described as ' descendant of an ancient 
race of yeomanry in Warwickshire.' They married on 9 June 
1706 {lb. ii. 384), and had, besides Samuel, a son Nathanael, 
born in 17 12, who died in 1737. 

Strange stories were told of Samuel's precocity. It is said that 
before he was three years old he insisted upon going to church to 
hear Sacheverell preach (Boswell, Life, by Hill, i. 39). His 
father was foolishly proud of him, and passed off an epitaph on 
' Good Master Duck,' really written by himself, as Samuel's com- 
position at the age of three. The child suffered from scrofula, 
which disfigured his face and injured or destroyed the sight of 
one eye. He was 'touched' by Queen Anne, and he retained a 
vague recollection of a ' lady in diamonds and a long black hood ' 
(Piozzi, Anecdotes, p. 10). He learnt his letters at a dame-school 
under one Jane Brown, who published a spelUng-book, and ' dedi- 



440 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

cated it to the Universe,' which, however, has preserved no copies. 
He next learnt Latin in Lichfield school. After two years he was 
under the head-master, Hunter, who was a brutal but efficient 
teacher. Johnson afterwards valued the birch as a less demoral- 
ising incentive than emulation. His force of mind and character 
already secured respect, and three of his school-fellows used regu- 
larly to carry him to school. One of them, named Hector, survived 
to give information to Boswell. He was indolent and unwieldy, 
unable to join in games, and 'immoderately fond' of reading the 
old romances, a taste which he retained through life. In the 
autumn of 1725 (Hawkins) he visited an uncle, Cornelius Ford, a 
clergyman, who wasted considerable ability by convivial habits 
(Johnson, Life of Fenton). Ford was struck by the lad's talents, 
and kept him till the next Whitsuntide. He was then excluded 
from the Lichfield school, and sent, by Ford's advice, to a school at 
Stourbridge under a Mr. Wentworth, whom he is also said to have 
assisted in teaching. After a year he returned home, and spent 
two years in 'lounging.' It was at this time probably that he 
refused, out of pride, to attend his father to Uttoxeter market. 
On the same day some fifty years later he performed penance for 
this offence by visiting Uttoxeter market and standing bareheaded 
for an hour in the rain on the site of his father's bookstall (Boswell, 
iv. 373; R. Warner, Tour through the Northern Counties; for 
some slight discrepancies in these statements see Notes and Queries, 
6th ser. xi. i, 91, 193). He read a great deal in a desultory fashion, 
and said afterwards (Boswell, Letters, p. 34) that he knew as 
much at eighteen as he did at fifty-two. He had written verses, 
of which Boswell gives specimens (one of them inserted in the 
Gent. Mag. for 1743, p. 378), and had no doubt made a reputation 
among his father's customers at Lichfield. A 'neighbouring 
gentleman, Mr. Andrew Corbet,' according to Hawkins (p. 9), 
offered to send Johnson to Oxford to read with his son, who had 
entered Pembroke College in 1727. Johnson was entered as a 
commoner on 31 Oct. 1728. According to Hawkins a disagree- 
ment with Corbet followed, and Johnson's supplies from this 
source were stopped after a time. The dates, however, are con- 
fused. Hawkins and Boswell say that Johnson remained three 
years at Oxford. The college books show him to have resided 



THE LIFE OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 441 

continuously till 12 Dec. 1729, after which he only resided for a few- 
brief periods, and his. name was removed on 8 Oct. 1731 (see 
appendix to Hill's Dr. Johnson, his Friends and his Critics). 
Johnson's tutor was a Mr. Jorden. He despised Jorden's lectures, 
though he respected the kindliness of the lecturer. Johnson seems 
to have surprised the college authorities by the extent of his reading, 
and a Latin translation of Pope's 'Messiah,' performed as a Christ- 
mas exercise, spread his reputation in the university, and was 
printed in 1731 in an Oxford 'Miscellany' brought out by 
J. Husbands, a fellow of Pembroke. Pope, to whom it was shown 
by George, son of Dr. Arbuthnot, is said to have paid it a high 
compHment (Hawkins, p. 13). Johnson was said by WilHam 
Adams (i 706-1 789) [q. v.], who succeeded Jorden as tutor, to have 
been a 'gay and frolicsome fellow,' and generally popular at 
Oxford. Johnson told Boswell, upon hearing this, that he was 
only 'mad and violent.' He was 'miserably poor,' meant to 
'fight his way by his literature and wit, and so disregarded all 
authority.' He was occasionally insubordinate (Boswell, i. 59, 
271), but amenable to kindness. He suffered from h3^ochondria, 
of which {ih. p. 63) he had a violent attack at Lichfield during the 
vacation of 1729. He frequently, says Boswell, walked from 
Lichfield to Birmingham and back in order to overcome his melan- 
choly by violent exertion. He wrote an account of his case in 
Latin, and laid it before his godfather. Dr. Swinfen, who was so 
much struck by its abiUty that, to Johnson's lasting offence, he 
showed it to several friends. While at Oxford he took up the 
'Serious Call' of WilHam Law [q. v.], by which he was profoundly 
affected. He had previously fallen into indifference to religious 
matters, and was even 'a lax talker against rehgion.' From 
this time his religious sentiments were always strong, though he 
continued to reproach himself with carelessness in practice. His 
poverty exposed him to vexations. His schoolfellow, John Taylor, 
afterwards J. Taylor of Ashbourne, proposed to become his com- 
panion at Pembroke, but upon Johnson's advice went to Christ 
Church to be under a Mr. Bateman, regarded as the best tutor 
at Oxford. Johnson used to get Bateman's lectures from Taylor, 
till he observed that the Christ Church men laughed at his worn- 
out shoes. Some one placed a new pair of shoes at his door, 



442 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN' 

when he 'threw them away with indignation.' Johnson read 
Greek and 'metaphysics ' at Oxford in his usual desultory fash- 
ion, and, in spite of his sufferings, retained a warm regard for 
his college and the university. 

Johnson's poverty no doubt caused his premature departure. 
He returned at the end of 1729 to Lichfield, where his father died 
in December 1731. The father was on the verge of bankruptcy, 
though not actually bankrupt. Johnson in July 1732 received* 
20/. from the estate, all that he could expect until his mother's 
death, and had therefore to 'make his own fortune' (Diary j 
quoted by Boswell, i. 80). He had some friends at Lichfield, 
especially Dr. Swinfen, Garrick's father, and Gilbert Walmsley, 
whom he describes with warm gratitude in the 'Life of Edmund 
Smith.' He also was on friendly terms with Miss Hill Boothby 
[q. v.], to whom he wrote affectionate letters in her last illness (first 
published in Piozzi's Letters), and with Miss 'Molly Aston,' 
the lovehest creature he ever saw (Boswell, i. 83 ; Piozzi, Anecd. 
p. 157). He now tried for some scholastic employment, though the 
dates are rather confused, and was (probably in the first part of 
1732) usher at Market Bosworth school. On 30 Oct. 1731 he 
describes himself as 'still unemployed,' having failed in an appli- 
cation for an ushership at his old school at Stourbridge. On 
16 July (apparently 1732) he says that he walked to Market 
Bosworth (Bosvi^ELL, i. 84-5), and on 27 July he had recently left 
the house of Sir Wolstan Dixie, the patron of the Bosworth school. 
He can hardly have been usher, as Hawkins says, under Anthony 
Blackwall [q. v.], who died 8 April 1730. His life at Bosworth, 
whatever the date, was miserable. Dixie, to whom he acted as 
chaplain, treated him harshly, and he always spoke of the monoto- 
nous drudgery with ' the strongest aversion, and even a degree of 
horror.' A letter from Addenbrooke, dean of Lichfield, recom- 
mending him for a tutorship about this time, is given in 'Notes 
and Queries,' 6th ser. x. 421. He gave up the place after a few - 
months, and went to live with an old schoolfellow. Hector, who was 
boarding at Birmingham with a Mr. Warren, the chief bookseller 
of the place and pubhsher of the 'Birmingham Journal.' John- 
son is said to have contributed to this paper, besides giving other 
help to Warren. He translated Lobo's 'Voyage to Abyssinia,' 



THE LIFE OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 



443 



for which Warren gave him five guineas. It was pubHshed in 1 73 5 . 
About 1734 he returned to Lichfield, and there made proposals 
for pubHshing Politian's Latin poems, with notes and a life. 
He addressed a letter to Edward Cave [q. v.] from Birmingham, 
dated 25 Nov. 1734, proposing to write a 'literary article' for the 
'Gentleman's Magazine.' 

Johnson had been introduced by Hector to a Henry Porter, a 
mercer at Birmingham. He was brother-in-law of Johnson's 
old master, Hunter (Nichols, Lit. Illustr. vii. 363). Porter was 
buried on 3 Aug. 1734, leaving a widow (born 4 Feb. 1688-9), 
whose maiden name was Jarvis, with a daughter, Lucy (baptised 
8 Nov. 1 7 15), and two sons. Miss Seward told Boswell that John- 
son had been in love with the daughter, whom she identified as 
the object of some verses written by him at Stourbridge. Hector 
emphatically denied this (see controversy in Gent. Mag. vols. liii. 
and liv., partly reprinted in Nichols's Lit. Illustr. vii. 321-64). 
After Porter's death Johnson married Mrs. Porter, 9 July 1735. 
It was, as he told Beauclerk, 'a love marriage on both sides,' 
and, though outsiders mocked, the strength of Johnson's affection 
was unsurpassable. Though his face was scarred, his 'huge 
structure of bones . . . hideously striking, his head wigless, his 
gesticulations grotesque,' Mrs. Porter at once recognised him as 
the 'most sensible man' she had ever seen. She was twenty 
years his senior. Her appearance is chiefly known from Garrick's 
comic descriptions to Boswell and Mrs. Piozzi. She was, he told 
Boswell, fat, with red painted cheeks, fantastic dress, and affected 
manners. Mrs. Piozzi, however, to whom he described her as 
a 'little painted puppet,' saw a picture of her at Lichfield, 'very 
pretty,' and, according to her daughter, 'very like.' The pair 
rode from Birmingham to be married at St. Werburgh's Church, 
Derby, and on the way Johnson showed his bride, by refusing to 
alter his pace at her bidding, that he would not be treated like a 
dog, which she had learnt from ' the old romances ' to be the cor- 
rect mode of behaving to lovers. The author of 'Memoirs . . . 
of Johnson ' (1785) says that she brought him 700/. or 800/., and 
Mr. Timmins ('Dr. Johnson in Birmingham,' from Transactions 
of Midland Institute, 1876) shows that she had 100/. in the hands 
of an attorney. Mrs. Johnson's small fortune probably enabled 



444 '5'/i? LESLIE STEPHEN 

him to take a house at Edial, near Lichfield, where, as an advertise- 
ment announced in the 'Gentleman's Magazine' for 1736, 'young 
gentlemen are boarded and taught the Greek and Latin languages 
by Samuel Johnson.' Johnson's impatience, irregular habits, 
and uncouth appearance were hardly likely to conciliate either 
parent or pupils. Objections to these peculiarities prevented him 
from obtaining the mastership of Solihull school in August 1735, 
and an ushership at Brewood school in 1736 {Notes and Queries, 
6th ser. x. 465; Nichols, Lit. Anecd. iii. SSS)- According to 
Boswell his only boys at Edial were 'David and George Garrick 
and one other.' Hawkins says that the number ' never exceeded 
eight.' The school collapsed, and Johnson resolved to try his 
fortunes in London. He left Lichfield on 3 March 1737, in com- 
pany with Garrick — Johnson, as he said jokingly, having two- 
pence halfpenny in his pocket, and Garrick three halfpence in his. 
The pair had also a letter from Walmsley to John Colson [q. v.], 
then master of a school at Rochester. Walmsley expected that 
Johnson would turn out 'a fine tragedy- writer,' He had written 
three acts of 'Irene' at Edial. Johnson left his wife at Lichfield, 
lodged at a staymaker's in Exeter Street, Strand, occasionally 
retiring to Greenwich, and lived with the utmost economy and 
temperance. A friend told him that he could live for 30/. a year 
without being contemptible. He found a patron, it seems, in 
Henry Hervey, third son of the Earl of Bristol, who had been in a 
regiment quartered at Lichfield. Hervey, as he said to Boswell 
in his last years, 'though a vicious man, was very kind to me. If 
you call a dog Hervey I shall love him.' Johnson, however, had to 
gain independence by literary work. The profession of authorship 
was beginning to be a recognised, though still a very unprofitable, 
pursuit. Cave's foundation of the 'Gentleman's Magazine' in 
1 73 1 had opened new prospects of employment, and Johnson now 
applied to Cave (12 July) proposing a new translation of the 'His- 
tory of the Council of Trent.' He returned in the summer to 
Lichfield, where he finished ' Irene ' (he afterwards gave the manu- 
script to Langton, who presented it to the King's Library, now in 
the British Museum), and, after three months' stay, returned with 
his wife to London, leaving Lucy Porter at Lichfield, and took 
lodgings in Woodstock Street, Hanover Square, and afterwards 



THE LIFE OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 445 

in Castle Street, Cavendish Square. Lucy Porter lodged with 
Johnson's mother at Lichfield till her fortieth year, when the death 
of a brother improved her means, and she lived at Lichfield till 
her death, 13 Jan. 1786. Johnson was always indulgent to her, 
allowed her to scold him 'like a schoolboy, and kept up constant 
communications with her till his death' (Seward, Letters, i. 116). 
He offered 'Irene,' without success, to Fleetwood, patentee of 
Drury Lane. In March 1738 a Latin ode by him to 'Sylvanus 
Urban' appeared in the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' and he soon 
became a regular contributor. He beheld St. John's Gate, the 
printing-office of the magazine, 'with reverence.' He still had 
illusions about authors. Hawkins (p. 49) tells of his introduction 
by Cave to an ale-house where he could see the great Mr. Browne 
smoking a pipe. Malone (Boswell, i. 63) gives a similar account 
of his dining behind a screen at Cave's to hear Walter Harte's 
[q. v.] conversation without exposing his shabbiness. If Harte, 
as is said, praised the life of Savage, this was as late as 1744. 
Johnson's employment upon the parliamentary debates began 
about 1738, when they were given, with fictitious names, as debates 
in the 'Senate of Lilliput.' They were written by William 
Guthrie (i 708-1 770) [q. v.], and only corrected by Johnson at this 
period {ih. i. 136). He wrote those published in the 'Magazine' 
from July 1741 to March 1744. The debates were often delayed 
till some time after the session, in order to avoid a breach of privi- 
lege, and the last report by Johnson was of a debate on 22 Feb. 
1743. Johnson was never in the gallery himself, but had some 
assistance from persons employed by Cave. Some of the debates, 
however, were 'the mere coinage of his own imagination' {ib. iv. 
409). They evidently bear a very faint resemblance to the real 
debates, as Mr. Birkbeck Hill shows by a comparison with Seeker's 
notes. In fact it is not conceivable that all the speakers confined 
themselves to sonorous generalities in the true Johnsonian style. 
At the time, however, they were often regarded as genuine, and 
Johnson near his death {ih.) expressed some compunction for the 
deception. Murphy describes a dinner at Foote's when Johnson 
claimed a speech attributed to Pitt and compared by the elder 
Francis to Demosthenes. He took care, he added, that the 'whig 
dogs should not have the best of it.' One debate was translated 



446 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

into French, German, and Spanish, as was stated in the 'Maga- 
zine' for February 1743; and Johnson's immediate cessation is 
plausibly regarded by Mr. Hill as a confirmation of his statement 
to Boswell that he stopped reporting because he 'would not be 
accessory to the propagation of falsehood' (ib. i. 152; see a full 
discussion by Mr. Birkbeck Hill, Boswell, i. App. A.). In May 
1738 Johnson published 'London,' in imitation of the third satire 
of 'Juvenal.' It was offered to Cave, who seems to have received 
it favourably, but was finally pubhshed by Dodsley, who gave 
ten guineas for the copyright. Johnson was determined not to take 
less than had been given to Paul Whitehead, whom he despised. 
Though Boswell denies it, the 'Thales' of the poem may perhaps 
refer to Savage (see Mr. Hill's note on Boswell, i. 125). It ap- 
peared on the same day as Pope's 'Epilogue,' originally called 
'1738,' and reached a second edition in a week. Though without 
the consummate polish of the 'Epilogue,' one of Pope's most 
finished pieces, it showed a masculine force of thought, which 
caused the unknown writer to be welcomed as a worthy follower 
of the chief poet of the day. Many passages expressed the pa- 
triotic sentiment which then stimulated the growing opposition 
to Walpole, both among tories and malcontent whigs. Pope 
himself inquired the author's name, and hearing his obscurity said, 
'He will soon be deterre.^ Johnson, however, was still poor 
enough to apply in 1739 for the mastership of a school at Appleby. 
The salary was 60/. a year, and it was required that masters should 
have the degree of M.A. Pope, knowing nothing of Johnson, it is 
said, but his satire, recommended him to Lord Gower, probably 
as having interest with the trustees ; and Gower wrote to a friend 
of Swift (i May 1739) in order to obtain a M.A. degree from 
Dublin. Johnson, as Gower reported, would rather die upon the 
road to an examination (if required) ' than be starved to death in 
translating for booksellers, which has been his only subsistence 
for some time past.' The application failed, and the want of a 
degree was also fatal to an application made by Johnson for leave 
to practise as an advocate at Doctors' Commons. 

Cave meanwhile had accepted his proposed translation of Father 
Paul's history, and in 1738-9 he received 49/. 75. on account of 
work done upon it; but it fell through in consequence of a project 



THE LIFE OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 447 

for a translation of the same book by another Samuel Johnson- 
In the ' Gentleman's Magazine' of 1739 he wrote a 'Life of Father 
Paul,' and continued to contribute various small articles. A squib 
against Walpole, called 'Marmor Norfolciense,' April 1739, 
was not very lively, and seems to have failed, though Hawkins 
tells a story (contradicted by Boswell) that warrants were issued 
against the author. Pope refers to it as 'very Humerous' in a 
note sent to Richardson the painter, with 'London,' in which he 
says that Johnson's convulsive infirmities made him 'a sad spec- 
tacle.' In 1742 Johnson was employed by Thomas Osborne, 
a bookseller, to catalogue the library of Edward Harley, second 
earl of Oxford [q. v.]. Osborne, treating Johnson with insolence, 
was knocked down for his pains. 'I have beat many a fellow,' 
as Johnson told Mrs. Piozzi, 'but the rest had the wit to hold their 
tongues' (Boswell, i. 154; Piozzi, Anecd. p. 233). A folio 
Septuagint of 1594 was shown at a bookseller's shop in 181 2 as the 
weapon with which the deed was performed (Nichols, Lit. Anecd. 
viii. 446). Except his contributions to the 'Magazine,' and a 
letter (i Dec. 1743) in which he takes upon himself a debt owed 
by his mother, little is preserved about Johnson till in February 
1744 his very powerful life of Savage (who died i Aug. 1743) 
was published by one Roberts. The book was written with great 
rapidity, forty-eight octavo pages at a sitting. It gives a striking 
account of miseries in which Johnson was himself a sharer. Sav- 
age and Johnson had passed nights in roaming the streets without 
money to pay for a lodging, and on one such occasion passed the 
time in denouncing Walpole, and resolved to 'stand by their 
country.' It seems possible that for a time Johnson had to part 
from his wife, who may have found a refuge with friends (Boswell, 
i. 163; Hawkins, pp. 53 sq.), though Hawkins kindly suggests 
that Johnson's 'irregularities' were the cause of the temporary 
separation. 

A period follows of such obscurity that Croker ventured the ab- 
surd hypothesis that Johnson was in some way implicated in the 
rebellion of 1745. A pamphlet of observations upon 'Macbeth,' 
with remarks upon Hanmer's edition of Shakespeare and pro- 
posals for a new edition by himself, was published in 1745. 
Warburton two years later, in the preface to his own 'Shake- 



448 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

speare/ excepted Johnson's remarks from a sweeping con- 
demnation of other critics, as written by a 'man of parts and 
genius/ and Johnson was grateful for praise given 'when praise 
was of value.' Warburton met Johnson once (Boswell, iv. 48), 
and was so pleased as to 'pat him.' He afterwards told Hurd, 
however, that Johnson's 'Shakespeare' showed 'as much folly 
as malignity' (Letters to Hurd, p. 367). Johnson was deterred 
by Warburton 's edition, or diverted by a new undertaking, from 
attempting 'Shakespeare' at present. In 1747 he issued the plan 
of his dictionary, inscribed to Lord Chesterfield. The inscription, 
as Johnson said, was the accidental result of his agreeing, at Dods- 
ley's request, to write it in order to have a pretext for delay. 
The wording implies, however, that some communication had 
passed between them. The booksellers who undertook the enter- 
prise (including Dodsley, Millar, and the Longmans) agreed to 
pay 1,575/. for the copyright. The payment included the whole 
work of preparing for the press; and Johnson lost 20I. on one 
occasion for a transcription of some leaves which had been written 
on both sides. He employed six amanuenses, five of whom, as 
Boswell is glad to record, were Scotsmen. From a letter published 
by Mr. Hill (Boswell, vi. xxxv) it appears that they received 235. 
a week; which he agreed to raise to 2/. 2s., not, it is to be hoped, 
out of the 1,575/. To all of them he afterwards showed kindness 
when in distress. He began (Hawkins, p. 175) by having an 
interleaved copy of the dictionary of Nathan Bailey [q. v.], then 
the most in use. He read through all the books to be quoted, 
marked the sentences, and had them transcribed by his clerks 
on separate slips of paper. After they had been arranged he added 
definitions and etymologies from Skinner, Junius, and others. 
The work was done in a house in Gough Square, near the printers, 
which was visited by Carlyle and described in his article on John- 
son. While the dictionary was still in preparation Johnson pub- 
lished his 'Vanity of Human Wishes' in January 1749. He 
received fifteen guineas for the copyright. In this and subsequent 
agreements he reserved a right to print one edition for himself. 
This the finest of his poems was profoundly admired by Byron 
and Sir Walter Scott, and is scarcely rivalled in the language in its 
peculiar style of grave moral eloquence. He said that he had com- 



THE LIFE OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 449 

posed seventy lines of it in one day before writing them down. 
Garrick had become manager of Drury Lane in 1747, when John- 
son contributed the opening prologue. Garrick now offered to 
bring out his friend's tragedy. Some alterations which he sug- 
gested were so resented by the author that Dr. Taylor had to be 
called in as pacificator. 'Irene' was produced on 6 Feb. 1749, 
with an epilogue by Sir W. Yonge, secretary-at-war under Walpole. 
It went off tolerably till Irene (Mrs. Pritchard) appeared with the 
bowstring round her neck, when the audience cried ' Murder ! ' The 
scene was altered, and Garrick managed to carry the piece through 
nine nights, when the author's three nights brought him 195/. 175., 
and the copyright was sold to Dodsley for 100/. The play, 
however, was felt to be a failure, and Johnson had the sense to dis- 
cover that his talents were not those of a dramatic author. The 
only explanation, indeed, of his rash attempt is that the drama 
was still the most profitable field of authorship, and Johnson was 
better paid for his play than for his other writing. When asked 
how he felt its ill-success he replied, 'Like the monument.' He 
is reported to have appeared in a side-box in a scarlet waistcoat with 
rich gold lace and a gold-laced hat. 

In 1750 Johnson began a more congenial task by writing 
the 'Rambler.' The first number appeared on Tuesday, 20 
March 1750, and it came out every Tuesday and Saturday till the 
last number, published on Saturday, 14 March 1752. Johnson 
wrote the whole, except No. 10, partly by Mrs. Chapone, No. 
30 by Miss Catherine Talbot, No. 97 by Samuel Richardson, and 
Nos. 44 and 100 by Mrs. Elizabeth Carter. Johnson received two 
guineas a paper (Murphy, 1806, p. 59). The papers were written 
in great haste, but carefully revised for the collected editions. 
Chalmers says, on the authority of Nichols the pubhsher, that 
there were six thousand corrections in the second and third edi- 
tions. The 'Rambler' attracted little notice at first, although 
the author was gratified by his wife's declaration that he had sur- 
passed even her expectations. The sale is said to have rarely 
exceeded five hundred; the only one which had a 'prosperous 
sale' being Richardson's (Chalmers, British Essayists, xix. xiv, 
xxvi). As the price was twopence, the profits cannot have been 
large. When collected, however, the papers acquired a high repu- 

2G 



450 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

tation, and ten editions (1,250 copies each) were published in 
London during Johnson's lifetime, besides Scottish and Irish 
editions. James Elphinston [q. v.] superintended the publication 
at Edinburgh. The 'Rambler' had probably a more lasting 
success than any other imitation of the 'Spectator,' though its 
rare modern readers will generally consider it as a proof of the 
amazing appetite of Johnson's public for solid sermonising. Omit- 
ting its clumsy attempts at occasional levity, it may be granted that 
in its ponderous sentences lie buried a great mass of strong sense 
and an impressive and characteristic view of life. From this time 
Johnson became accepted as an imposing moralist. 

In 1750 Johnson wrote a prologue for 'Comus,' which was per- 
formed on 5 April at Drury Lane for the benefit of Milton's grand- 
daughter. He had written a preface to the pamphlet in which 
William Lauder (d. 1771) [q. v.] published his forgeries as to 
Milton's alleged imitations of the moderns, and in it urged a sub- 
scription for the benefit of the granddaughter. Upon the exposure 
of the forgery by Douglas, Johnson dictated a letter of confession 
to Lauder. 

The 'Rambler' was hardly finished when Johnson lost his 
wife, 17 March 1752. He felt the blow with extreme keenness, 
and ever afterwards cherished her memory with a tenderness 
which appears from many touching references in his 'Prayers 
and Meditations.' Compunction for little disagreements was no 
doubt exaggerated by his melancholy temperament. She was 
buried at Bromley in Kent, and he wrote a sermon to be delivered* 
by Taylor on the occasion. It was not preached, but printed after 
his death. Taylor is said (Piozzi, Letters, ii. 384) to have declined 
because the sermon was too complimentary to the deceased. 

In 1753-4 Johnson wrote some papers in the 'Adventurer,' 
undertaken by his friend and closest imitator, Hawkesworth, and 
enlisted Joseph Warton as a contributor. The dictionary was now 
approaching completion, and produced a famous encounter with 
Chesterfield. A story told by Hawkins, that the first offence was 
caused by Chesterfield's reception of Colley Cibber, while Johnson 
was left in the antechamber, was denied to Boswell by Johnson 
himself. His only complaint was Chesterfield's continued neglect. 
Chesterfield now wrote a couple of papers in the ' World' (28 Nov. 



THE LIFE OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 451 

and 5 Dec. 1754), recommending the book, no doubt with a view 
to a dedication. Johnson wrote a letter, dated 7 Feb. 1755, 
repelling this advance with singular dignity and energy. ■ He felt 
bound, it seems, to preserve some reticence in regard to his letter, 
but ultimately gave copies to Baretti and to Boswell. Boswell 
deposited both in the British Museum. Johnson says that the 
notice has been delayed ' till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it, 
till I am lonely and cannot impart it, till I am known and do not 
want it.' Warburton complimented Johnson, through Adams, 
upon his manly spirit. Chesterfield was wise enough not to reply, 
but suggested, in conversation with Dodsley, that he had always 
been ready to receive Johnson, whose pride or shyness was there- 
fore to be blamed for the result. Dr. Birkbeck Hill proves that 
Chesterfield did not, as Boswell believed, refer to Johnson as the 
'respectable Hottentot' of his letters (Dr. Johnson, &c., pp. 214- 
29). Johnson said that he had once received 10/. from Chester- 
field, doubtless in recognition of the 'plan' inscribed to him, but 
thought it too trifling a favour to be mentioned in the letter. The 
letter justifies itself, and no author can fail to sympathise with this 
declaration of literary independence. Hawkins (p. 191) says that 
Chesterfield sent Sir Thomas Robinson to apologise, and that 
Robinson declared that, if he could have afforded it, he would have 
settled an annuity of 500/. a year upon Johnson. Johnson replied 
that if the first peer of the realm made such an offer he would show 
him downstairs. 

In 1754 Johnson visited Oxford for the first time since he had 
ceased to reside, in order to consult some books for the dictionary, 
although he seems to have in fact collected nothing, and stayed 
five weeks at Kettel Hall, near Trinity College. His chief com- 
panion was Thomas Warton, then resident at Trinity, in whose 
company he renewed his acquaintance with the university. War- 
ton also helped to obtain for him the M.A. degree. It was thought 
desirable that these letters should appear on the title-page of the 
dictionary for the credit both of himself and the university. The 
official letter from the chancellor referred to the 'Rambler' and 
to the forthcoming work. The diploma is dated 20 Feb. 1755. 
The dictionary appeared, in 2 vols, folio, on 15 April 1755, and at 
once took its place as the standard authority. It was a great 



452 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

advance upon its predecessors. The general excellence of its defi- 
nitions and the judicious selection of illustrative passages make it 
(as often observed) entertaining as well as useful for reference. 
Its most obvious defect arises from Johnson's ignorance of the 
early forms of the language and from the conception then natural 
of the purpose of a dictionary. Johnson (see his preface) had 
sensibly abandoned his first impression that he might be able to 
'fix the language/ as he came to see that every living language must 
grow. He did not aim, however, at tracing the growth historically, 
but simply at defining the actual senses of words as employed by 
the 'best authors.' He held that the language had reached almost 
its fullest development in the days of Shakespeare, Hooker, Bacon, 
and Spenser, and thought it needless to go further back than 
Sidney. He also, as a rule, omitted living authors. The dic- 
tionary, therefore, was of no philological value, although it has been 
the groundwork upon which many later philologists have worked. 
Taking for granted the contemporary view of the true end of a 
dictionary, it was a surprising achievement, and made an epoch 
in the study of the language. 

Johnson's labours during the preparation of the dictionary 
must have been enormous, especially while he was also publishing 
the 'Rambler.' He never afterwards overcame his constitutional 
indolence for so strenuous and prolonged an effort. He was 
already attracting many friends, and no man ever had a more 
numerous or distinguished circle, or was more faithful to all who 
had ever done him a kindness. He took an early delight in the 
tavern clubs characteristic of the time. The first mentioned ap- 
pears to be a club in Old Street, at which he met Psalmanazar, 
and the 'Metaphysical Tailor,' an uncle of John Hoole [q. v.]. 
In the winter of 1749 he formed a club which met weekly at 'a 
famous beefsteak-house,' the King's Head, Ivy Lane. Among the 
members were Richard Bathurst [q. v.], the 'good hater,' who was 
a 'man after his own heart,' John Hawkesworth [q. v.], his spe- 
cial imitator, Samuel Dyer [q. v], and (Sir) John Hawkins [q. v.], 
his biographer. Johnson already made it a rule to talk his best 
and thus acquired his conversational supremacy (Hawkins, pp. 
219-59, gives a long account of this club; see Boswell, i. 190-1, 
with Mr. Hill's note). Among other friends acquired at this 



THE LIFE OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 453 

period was Bennet Langton [q. v.], who had been attracted to him 
by reading the 'Rambler.' Through Langton he became known 
to Topham Beauclerk [q. v.], and with the pair had his famous 
night's frisk to Billingsgate (Boswell, i. 251). He made the 
acquaintance of Reynolds at the house of their common friends, 
two daughters of Admiral Cotterell, who had been neighbours of 
Johnson in 1738. Reynolds, it seems, had been induced by the 
life of Savage to cultivate Johnson's acquaintance. Charles 
Burney (i 726-1814) [q. v.] had been impressed by the 'Rambler,' 
and in 1755 wrote to Johnson from Lynn Regis offering to take 
some copies of the dictionary. Their first interview seems to have 
been in 1758 {ih. i. 328). Johnson made Goldsmith's acquaint- 
ance in 1 76 1, and must have become known to Burke by the same 
time. He constantly added friends to his circle, and declared late 
in life that he thought a day lost in which he did not make a new 
acquaintance. 'A man,' he said, 'should keep his friendship 
in constant repair,' and he scarcely lost a friend, except by death. 
Some time after the loss of his wife he received into his house Miss 
Anna Williams, daughter of a Welsh physician, Zachariah Will- 
iams, who died 12 July 1755. Miss WilHams had come to Lon- 
don, for an operation upon her eyes, during Mrs. Johnson's life. 
She afterwards became totally bhnd, and had a permanent apart- 
ment in Johnson's house. Her father had invented a method for 
determining the longitude by means of the variation of the com- 
pass, of which Johnson wrote an account in 1755 (published, with 
an Italian translation, by Baretti; a copy, presented by Johnson, 
is in the Bodleian Library). Miss Williams was well-educated 
and intelligent. Johnson took pleasure in her conversation, took 
her advice, and always treated her with high respect, in spite of her 
growing 'peevishness' in later years. She seems to have had some 
small means. Lady Knight (see Croker's Johnsoniana) says that 
she was never dependent on Johnson, and that each drew freely 
on the other's purse. Garrick, however, gave her a benefit, at 
Johnson's desire, by which she made 200/. (Boswell, i. 393), 
and Mrs. Montagu gave her a small annuity in 1775. Another 
inmate of Johnson's house from an early period was Robert Levett, 
who had been waiter in a French coffee-house, picked up a know- 
ledge of physic, and practised among the poor. Johnson had 



454 ^^^ LESLIE STEPHEN 

known him from about 1746. He was grotesque, stiff, and silent, 
according to Boswell (i. 24), and always waited upon Johnson at 
breakfast. Johnson, however, never treated him as a dependent, 
and upon his death, 20 Jan. 1782, wrote the most pathetic of his 
poems. In 1777 or 1778 Johnson took into his house Mrs. Des- 

• moulins (to whom he allowed half a guinea a week), widow of a 
writing-master and daughter of his godfather. Dr. Swinfen, and a 
Miss Carmichael, of whom little is known (ib. iv. 222). The party- 
was not harmonious. Wilhams, said Johnson, 'hates everybody; 
Levett hates Desmouhns, and does not love Williams ; Desmoulins 
hates them both; Poll [Miss Carmichael] loves none of them.' 
Johnson sometimes feared to go home on account of their com- 
plaints, says Mrs. Piozzi {Anecdotes, p. 213); but if any one 
reproached them, he always defended them. His charity to the 
unprotected was unbounded through hfe, according to the testi- 
mony of Boswell, Mrs. Piozzi, Murphy, and even Hawkins (see 
Mr. Hill's appendix to Boswell,vo1. iii.). Johnson had also a black 
servant, Francis Barber, born in Jamaica as a slave of Colonel 
Bathurst, father of Richard Bathurst. He was freed by the colo- 
nel's will, and about 1752 entered Johnson's service. Johnson 
sent him to school, and Barber left him to go to sea in 1759. John- 
son applied to Smollett, who applied to Wilkes, who obtained 
Barber's discharge by his influence with one of the lords of the 
admiralty. From this time till Johnson's death Barber continued 
in his service (ib. i. 238, 348). 

The sum due for the dictionary had been advanced, and ap- 
parently 100/. more (Murphy, p. 78), before the task was com- 
pleted. Johnson's poverty is shown by a note addressed to Rich- 
ardson on 16 March 1756, stating that he had been arrested for 
5/. 135. and asking for a loan {ib. p. 86). Richardson sent him six 
guineas. He undertook to edit the 'Literary Magazine, or Uni- 
versal Review,' of which the first number appeared in May 1756, 
and contributed a good many essays. A review of Jonas Hanway 
provoked a retort from the author, and Johnson made the only 

^eply to which he ever condescended. He was defending his 
favourite tea, of which his potations were enormous. Cumber- 
land's report of his having drunk twenty-five cups at a sitting seems 
to mark the maximum. Another remarkable article was his 



THE LIFE OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 455 

attack on Soame Jenyns's 'Inquiry into the Origin of Evil,' which 
gave an occasion for some characteristic utterances. The maga- 
zine expired in 1758, Johnson having ceased to write in it. He 
now took up again, in 1756, his proposed edition of Shakespeare, 
but dawdled over it unconscionably. On 15 April 1758 appeared 
the first number of his 'Idler,' published on Saturdays in New- 
bery's 'Universal Chronicle.' The last appeared on 5 April 
1760. Twelve of the 103 numbers were contributed by friends, 
including Langton, Thomas Warton, and Reynolds. They were 
written hastily and were less impressive than the 'Rambler.' 
The first collected edition in 2 vols, appeared in October 1761, 
and Johnson's two-thirds of the profits produced 84^. 2^. ^d. 

In January 1759 (about the 20th) Johnson's mother died at the 
age of ninety. Johnson had been unable to see her for some 
years, though he had helped her with money and wrote some very 
touching letters to her on her deathbed. In order to raise a small 
sum to meet the expense of her illness and death and to discharge 
some small debts he wrote ' Rasselas ' in the evenings of one week 
(BoswELL, i. 341, 512-16). He received 100/. for the copyright, 
and had a present of 25/. more on a second edition. This power- 
ful though ponderous work was apparently the most popular of his 
writings. It reached a fifth edition in 1775, and has been trans- 
lated into French, German, Italian, Dutch, Bengalee, Hungarian, 
Polish, modern Greek, and Spanish (J. Macaulay, Bibliography 
of Rasselas) . Johnson himself remarked the curious coincidence 
with Voltaire's 'Candide.' On 20 Jan. Johnson promised to 
deliver 'Rasselas' to the printers on Monday (the 25th), and it 
appeared about the end of March (Boswell, i. 516. vi. xxviii). 
'Candide' is mentioned by Grimm on i April as having just 
appeared. Each is a powerful assault upon the fashionable 
optimism of the day, though Voltaire's wit has saved 'Candide' 
from the partial oblivion which has overtaken 'Rasselas.' About 
this time Johnson 'found it necessary to retrench his expenses.' 
He gave up his house in Gough Square ; Miss Williams went into 
lodgings in Bolt Court, Fleet Street: and he took chambers at 
No. I Inner Temple Lane, where he lived in indolent poverty 
(Murphy, p. 90). Though most of Johnson's literary services to 
friends were gratuitous, he occasionally received money for such 



456 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

work. Thomas Hervey [q. v.] gave him 50/. for a pamphlet (never 
pubUshed) written in his defence (Boswell, ii. ^t,), and he received 
10/. los. from Dr. Madden for correcting his 'Boulter's Monu-' 
ment.' Occasional windfalls of this kind must have been of some 
importance to his finances. Johnson took tea with Miss Williams 
every night (as Boswell mentions in 1763) before going home, 
however late he might be. Beyond helping his friends with a few 
dedications and articles and writing an introduction to the proceed- 
ings of a committee for clothing French prisoners (1760), he did 
Httle unless he worked at his Shakespeare. On i Feb. 1762 he 
took part in examining into the ridiculous Cock Lane ghost story, 
and published an account of the detection of the cheat in the 
'Gentleman's Magazine' (xxxii. 81). 

After the accession of George III a few pensions were given to 
literary persons, chiefly, it seems, to hangers-on of the Bute min- 
istry. Thomas Sheridan and Murphy, who were common friends 
of Johnson and Wedderburne (afterwards Lord Loughborough), 
suggested to Wedderburne to apply to Bute on behalf of Johnson. 
Other friends appear to have concurred in the application, and a 
pension of 300/. a year was granted in July 1762. Johnson, 
who had said in his dictionary that a pension in England was 'gen- 
erally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason 
to his country,' hesitated as to the propriety of accepting the offer. 
Reynolds, whom he consulted, told him, of course, that the defini- 
tion would not apply to him; and the scruple was probably of 
the slightest. Bute assured Johnson emphatically that the grant 
was solely for what he had done, not for anything that he was to 
do. There is no reason for doubting either Bute's sincerity or 
Johnson's. The opposition writers naturally made a little fun out 
of the pension. Johnson laughed at the noise, and wished that his 
pension were twice as large and the noise twice as great (Boswell, 
i. 429). Johnson was requested to write pamphlets by ministers, 
and received materials from the ministry for writing upon the 
Falkland Islands. It is probable that he felt some obhgations as 
a pensioner, in spite of the assurances given him at the time ; but 
the pamphlets clearly expressed his settled convictions. The first 
was not written for seven years after this time, and he received 
nothing for them except from the booksellers (ib. ii. 147). No 



THE LIFE OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 457 

imputation can be made upon his independence, though the impulse 
to write would hardly have come to him had it not been for his 
connection with the government. 

The pamphlets thus written were 'The False Alarm' (1770), 
upon the expulsion of Wilkes and the seating of his opponent Lut- 
trell; 'Thoughts on the late Transactions respecting Falkland's 
Islands' (177 1), in answer to the Junius letter of 30 Jan. 1771 
(Junius took no notice of the attack); 'The Patriot' (1774), 
written on behalf of Thrale, then candidate for Southwark at 
the general election {ih. ii. 286); and 'Taxation no Tyranny' 
(1775), in answer to the address of the American congress. The 
first edition of the Falkland Islands pamphlet was stopped by 
Lord North, after some copies had been sold, in order to suppress 
a sneer at George Grenville ('if he could have got the money' 
[the Manilla ransom] 'he could have counted it') ( see Boswell, 
ii. 136; and Junius'' Letters, 1812, ii. 199). The ministry cut out 
at least one insulting passage from the American pamphlet (Bos- 
well, ii. 313). The pamphlets are written forcibly and with less 
than the usual mannerism; but they have in general the natural 
defect of amateur political writing. They are interesting as ex- 
pressions of Johnson's sturdy toryism, his conviction of the neces- 
sity of subordination and of the frivolity of popular commonplaces 
about liberty. He hated whigs, not so much because they had 
different principles of government as because he held that ' whig- 
gism was a negation of all principle' {ih. i. 431). The attack upon 
the Americans is arrogant and offensive. Although Mr. Hill 
truly points out (vol. ii. App. B) that Johnson's dislike to America 
was associated with his righteous hatred of slavery and consequent 
prejudice against the planters, it is equally true that he states the 
English claims in the most illiberal and irritating fashion. 

The pension unfortunately led to a quarrel with Thomas Sheri- 
dan, who had helped to procure it. Sheridan also received a 
pension of 200/. a year, and a petulant remark of Johnson's 
('that it is time for me to give up mine') was repeated to Sheri- 
dan and caused a lasting alienation, the only case recorded of the 
loss of a friend of Johnson's by his rough remarks. Johnson was 
willing in this case to be reconciled, and Reynolds observes that, 
after he had given offence by his rudeness, he was always the first 
to seek for reconciliation (Taylor, Reynolds ^ ii. 457). 



458 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

Beauclerk hoped that Johnson would now 'purge and live 
cleanly like a gentleman,' and for the rest of his Hfe Johnson was 
free from pecuniary troubles. He paid off old debts and made 
loans to friends. He was enabled to indulge his constitutional 
indolence and to write comparatively little. 'No man but a 
blockhead,' he said, 'ever wrote except for money' {ib. iii. 19). 
His spreading reputation at the same time increased his oppor- 
tunities for social relaxation. According to Dr. Maxwell, who 
knew him from 1754, he was often in bed till twelve o'clock or 
'declaiming over his tea.' Literary people looked in about that 
time, and, after talking all the morning, he dined at a tavern, 
stayed late, and afterwards loitered long at some friend's house, 
though he seldom took supper. He never refused an invitation 
to a tavern, often amused himself at Ranelagh, and, according 
to Maxwell, must have read and written at night (ib. ii. 119). It 
was on 16 May 1763 that he made the acquaintance of Boswell 
[see under Boswell, James], and thus became visible to posterity. 
One famous field for conversational display was opened by the 
foundation of the Club, probably in the winter of 1763-4. Sir 
Joshua Reynolds suggested it to Johnson, and the other original 
members were Burke, Dr. Nugent (Burke's father-in-law). Beau- 
clerk, Langton, Goldsmith, Anthony Chamier [q. v.], and Hawkins. 
It began by a weekly supper in the Turk's Head, Gerrard Street, 
Soho, where it was held till 1783. In 1772 the supper was changed 
to a fortnightly dinner during the meeting of parliament. Boswell 
was elected, owing chiefly to Johnson's influence, on 30 April 1773, 
and the numbers were gradually increased till in 1780 there were 
thirty-five members. Among the chief members elected in John- 
son's lifetime were Bishop Percy, G. Colman, Garrick, Sir W. 
Jones, C. J. Fox, Gibbon, Adam Smith, R. B. Sheridan, Dunning, 
Lord Stowell, Bishop Shipley, Thomas and Joseph Warton, and 
Charles Burney (see list of Club in Croker, Boswell, ii. App. i). 
Johnson was annoyed by Garrick's assumption in saying, ' I'll be 
of you,' but welcomed his election in 1773, and upon his death de- 
clared that the Club should keep a year's widowhood. Johnson 
did not attend very regularly after the first years; but the Club 
no doubt extended the conversational empire of the man whom 
Smollett had called in 1759 the 'great Cham of Uterature.' 



THE LIFE OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 459 

The connection with the Thrales, formed about this time, was 
of more importance to Johnson's happiness. Henry Thrale was 
a prosperous brewer, who was member for Southwark (1768-80). 
He had a house at Streatham, called Streatham Park, a large white 
house in a park of about a hundred acres on the south side of the 
lower common. It was pulled down in May 1863 (Thorne, 
Environs of London, p. 590). His wife, Hesther Lynch Salisbury, 
afterwards Mrs. Piozzi [q. v.], was a very bright little woman 
of literary tastes. Murphy, who was intimate with the Thrales, 
introduced them to Johnson in 1764 (Piozzi, Anecd. p. 125). He 
dined with them frequently and followed them to Brighton in the 
autumn of 1765. Johnson appears to have had a serious illness 
about this time, and in February 1766 Boswell found that he had 
been obliged to give up the use of wine. His constitutional melan- 
choly seems to have been developed, although he was now free 
from money troubles and had settled in a comfortable house in 
Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, with Miss Williams and Levett. 
The Thrales tried to soothe him, and on one occasion found him 
in such despair, apparently fearing that his melancholy would lead 
to insanity, that they prevailed upon him to leave the close London 
court for Streatham. He stayed there from midsummer to October 
1766 (Boswell, ii. 25 ; see Mr. Hill's Appendix F to vol. ii. for a 
discussion of dates). 

He soon became almost a member of the family. He had a 
room at Streatham, where he generally spent some months in the 
summer, coming up to town from Saturday to Monday to see that 
his dependents got three good dinners in the week (Piozzi, Anecd. 
p. 85). He had also a room in their town houses, first in South- 
wark, and, for a short time before Thrale's death, in Grosvenor 
Square. Thrale was a sensible man, with some scholarship as 
well as knowledge of business, and a delight, according to Madame 
d'Arblay {Memoirs of Burney, ii. 104), in 'provoking a war of 
words,' which Johnson frequently gratified. He was, however, 
rather given to foolish speculations, and in his last years, when his 
mind was probably weakened, became troublesome to his wife. 
Johnson learned to drop some of his roughness and irregular habits 
at the house. His presence naturally attracted literary society, 
and Mrs. Thrale was flattered by her power over the literary 



460 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

dictator. Johnson, who called her ' my mistress ' and Thrale ' my 
master,' was alternately a wise monitor and a tolerably daring 
flatterer, while Thrale invariably treated him with profound respect. 
They soothed, as he said long afterwards, 'twenty years of a life 
radically wretched.' 

Johnson's intellectual activity henceforward found its chief 
outlet in conversation. To the inimitable reports of Boswell may 
be added the sayings reported by Mrs. Piozzi (though obviously 
not very accurate), the excellent descriptions in Mme. d'Arblay's 
'Diary,' and a variety of detached sayings scattered through 
works to which a reference is given below. His interview with 
George III, especially valued by Boswell, took place in February 
1767 (Boswell, ii. 33-43) ; that with Wilkes, which showed Bos- 
well's diplomatic powers at their highest, on 15 May 1776 {ib. iii. 
69-78) ; and that in which the quaker Mrs. Knowles claimed to 
have confuted him in an argument about a convert to her faith, 
on 15 April 1778 {ib, iii. 284-98). Mrs. Knowles published a 
counter- version of this in the 'Gentleman's Magazine' for June 
1 791 (reprinted in ' Johnsoniana'), and Miss Seward gave a third 
account (Letters, i. 97). The quaintest proof of Johnson's dic- 
tatorship is the 'round-robin' presented to him in 1776 to request 
him to write Goldsmith's epitaph in English (facsimile in Boswell, 
iii. 83), written by Burke, presented by Reynolds, and signed 
(among others) by Gibbon. Nearly every distinguished man of 
letters of the period came more or less into contact with Johnson, 
except David Hume, to whom he would hardly have consented to 
speak, and Gray, whose acquaintance in town was limited to the 
Walpole circle. Walpole speaks of Johnson with aversion, and 
doubtless expressed the prejudices of 'good society.' 'Great 
lords and ladies,' said Johnson (Boswell, iv. 116), 'don't love to 
have their mouths stopped.' Their curiosity was therefore soon 
satisfied, and, in spite of his reverence for rank, he saw little of the 
leaders in society or politics. 

In October 1 765 Johnson had at last brought out his Shakespeare, 
which he describes as at press in 1757. A sneer in Churchill's 
'Ghost' (1763) is supposed to have hastened the appearance: 

He for subscribers baits his hook, 

And takes the cash — but where's the book ? 



THE LIFE OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 461 

(bk. iii. 11. 801-2). The commentary may perhaps be said to 
be better than could have been expected from a man whose strong 
intellect, unprovided with the necessary knowledge of contemporary 
authors, was steeped in the narrow conceptions of poetry most 
unlike Shakespeare's, and too indolent for minute study. He 
received 375/. for the first and 100/. for the second edition (Nichols, 
Lit. Anecd. v. 597). After this, besides occasionally helping 
friends and writing his 'Tour to the Hebrides' (see below), he 
did little until he wrote the most permanently valuable of his 
books. On 29 May 1777 he agreed with the booksellers to write 
prefaces for a proposed collection of the English poets. They 
judiciously asked him to name his own price. He suggested two 
hundred guineas, though, according to Malone, they would have 
given one thousand or fifteen hundred (Boswell, iii. 114). An- 
other 100/. was given afterwards, and a further 100/. on the pub- 
lication of a separate edition of the lives {ih. iv. 35). The poets 
were selected by the booksellers, though Blackmore, Watts, Pom- 
fret, and Yalden were added on Johnson's advice. The first 
four volumes appeared in 1779, the last six in 1781. They include 
a reprint of the life of Savage and a life of Young by Sir Herbert 
Croft (175.1-1816) [q. v.]. Johnson's mannerism had become less 
marked ; and the book, except in the matter of antiquarian re- 
search, is a model of its kind. Of all his writings this falls least 
behind his conversation in excellence, and is admirable within the 
limits of his critical perception. 

Johnson's pension enabled him to indulge in frequent excursions 
from London. Though constantly expressing his passion for 
London (e.g. 'when a man is tired of London he is tired of life, 
for there is in London all that life can afford') {ih. iii. 178), he 
often showed interest in travel. His journeys consisted chiefly 
of visits to Oxford and Lichfield, and to Dr. Taylor at Ashbourne, 
where he discussed his old friend's bulls and bulldogs. He en- 
joyed the motion, and said that he should like to spend his life 
'driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman' {ih. iii. 
162). His chief performance, however, was his journey with 
Boswell in 1773. Leaving Edinburgh on 18 Aug. they travelled 
by St. Andrews and the east coast to Inverness, crossed to Skye, 
and spent some time in visiting the neighbouring islands. They 



462 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

returned by Inverary to Glasgow, and by Auchinleck, where he 
had a smart encounter with the elder Boswell, to Edinburgh. 

The account of his journey was published in 1775, and, if it 
shows little taste for the picturesque, proved a keen interest in the 
social condition of the natives. It was commended by Burke and 
others, much to Johnson's pleasure {ib. iii. 137) ; but its dignified 
disquisition is less amusing than Boswell's graphic account of the 
same journey, in which Johnson is himself the chief figure. An 
expression of disbelief in the authenticity of Ossian's poems, chiefly 
on the ground that MacPherson had appealed to original manu- 
scripts which were never produced, caused MacPherson to write 
an angry letter to Johnson. Johnson replied in a contemptuous 
letter saying that he 'would not be deterred from detecting what 
he thought a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian ' (original sold in 
1875 for 50/.). The letter implies that MacPherson had threatened 
violence (see Academy, 19 Oct. 1878, for MacPherson's letters), 
which Johnson despised. Boswell relates that when Foote 
threatened to mimic him on the stage he sent for a stout oak stick 
to administer punishment. Foote judiciously gave up the plan 
(Boswell, ii. 299). 

In 1774 Johnson made a Welsh tour with the Thrales, and in 
1775 accompanied them to Paris. His brief diaries give little of 
the impressions made upon him. In France he persisted in talk- 
ing Latin, and saw nothing of the literary society which had wel- 
comed Hume. His name was probably little known, and it was 
as well for the credit of English good manners that his hosts should 
not hear his opinion of them. Although Johnson had talked of a 
visit to Ireland in early days, and after his Scottish tour wanted 
Boswell to go up the Baltic with him, he never left England except 
on his French tour. An intended journey to Italy with the Thrales 
in 1776 was abandoned in consequence of the death of Thrale's 
only son (see Mr. Hill's list of Johnson's travels, Boswell, iii. 
App. B). 

In his later years Johnson's health gradually declined. He 
suffered much from asthma and gout. The comforts of Streatham 
and Mrs. Thrale's attentions were the more valuable as he became 
more of an invalid. On 4 April 1781 Thrale, who had had an 
apoplectic attack in 1779, died of another fit, to Johnson's pro- 



THE LIFE OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 463 

found sorrow. 'I looked/ he said, 'for the last time upon the 
face that for fifteen years had never been turned upon me but with 
respect and benignity.' Johnson was appointed executor with a 
legacy of 200/., and enjoyed a taste of practical business, observing 
at the sale of the brewery that 'we are not here to sell a parcel of 
boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the 
dreams of avarice' (Boswell, iv. 87). According to Mrs. Piozzi 
he took a simple-minded pleasure in discharging his duties as 
executor and signing cheques for large sums. 

For some time the loss of Thrale did not affect Johnson's posi- 
tion in the family. In the autumn he made his usual visit to Lich- 
field, where he was depressed by the growing infirmities of his 
friends, especially Miss Aston and his stepdaughter Lucy Porter. 
In the beginning of 1782 he was seriously ill; and his household 
was made desolate by the death of Levett (17 Jan.) and the decline 
of Miss Williams, who, however, lingered till i Sept. 1783 (Piozzi, 
Letters, ii. 309). 

The comforts of Streatham were therefore more valuable than 
ever; but in the autumn of 1782 this resource failed. Mrs. Piozzi 
in her 'Anecdotes' (1785) gave an account of the circumstances, 
which was an implicit apology for her own conduct. She says 
that she had only been able to bear Johnson's 'yoke' while she 
had the support of her 'coadjutor' Thrale; that, after Thrale's 
death, Johnson's roughness and demands upon her time became 
intolerable; and that she 'took advantage of a lost lawsuit' to 
abandon London and Streatham on the plea of economy, and retire 
to Bath, where she could be free. Johnson's health, she adds, no 
longer needed her attention, as he suffered from nothing but ' old 
age and infirmity,' and had abundance of medical advice and at- 
tendance. This statement, accepted by her biographer, Hayward, 
has helped to support the accusations of brutality made against 
Johnson. The documents, however, which he publishes show that 
it is incomplete and misleading. During Thrale's illness of two 
years, and for a year or so after his death, Johnson's 'yoke' had 
been a most valued support. She had attended him affectionately 
during his illness in 178 1-2, and in her diary had spoken even 
passionately of his value. 'If I lose him,' she says i Feb. 1782, 
'I am more than undone' (Hayward, Piozzi, i. 164, 167). A 



464 ^^R LESLIE STEPHEN 

sudden change appears when she made up her mind to travel in 
Italy in order to economise. She felt that it was impossible to 
take Johnson, and yet that it would be 'shocking' to leave him. 
A temporary improvement in his health encouraged her (22 Aug.) 
to reveal her plan to him. To her annoyance he approved of it, 
and told her daughter that he should stay at home. She at once 
decided that his connection with her (though not his connection 
with Thrale) was interested, and that he cared less for her con- 
versation than for her 'roast beef and plumb pudden, which he 
now devours too dirtily for endurance' (ib. p. 171). The habits 
which she had borne for sixteen years became suddenly intoler- 
able. 

The explanation of this change, naturally passed over in the 
'Anecdotes,' is obvious. She was already (ib.) contemplating 
marriage with Piozzi, an Italian musician whom she had first met 
in 1780. To visit Italy under his guidance 'had long been her 
dearest wish.' Johnson had already, in 1781, written of Piozzi 
(Piozzi, Letters, ii. 227, 229) in terms which, though civil, imply 
some jealousy of his influence. Mrs. Thrale knew that the mar- 
riage to a poor popish foreigner would (however unreasonably) 
disgust all her friends, and especially her daughters, now growing 
up. It led to sharp quarrels with them, and she condemns their 
heartlessness as vigorously as Johnson's. That Johnson would 
be furious if he suspected was certain, and he could hardly be 
without suspicions. Mme. d'Arblay declared in her memoirs of 
her father (1832) that Mrs. Thrale had become petulant, that she 
neglected and slighted Johnson, and that he resented the change. 
Although this statement, written many years later, contains some 
palpable and important inaccuracies, it gives a highly probable 
account of the relations between Johnson and Mrs. Thrale at the 
time. 

Mrs. Thrale resolved to give up Streatham. On 6 Oct. 1782 
Johnson took a solemn leave of the library and the church, record- 
ing also in Latin the composition of his last dinner (possibly for 
medical reasons). He accompanied the Thrales to Brighton, 
where, according to Mme. d'Arblay's 'Diary' (ii. 177), he was in 
his worst humour and made himself generally disagreeable. Mrs. 
Thrale had given up the Italian journey, and was now induced by 



THE LIFE OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 465 

her daughter's remonstrances to break with Piozzi for a time. 
Johnson was still on apparently friendly terms with her during 
her stay in London in the winter. She went to Bath in April 
1783 and corresponded with Johnson. Their letters, however, 
show a marked want of cordiality and frequent irritation on both 
sides. Johnson complains of the now desolate state of his house, 
and gives details of his growing infirmities. On 17 June he had a 
paralytic stroke. He recovered for the time, and in July spent a 
fortnight with Langton at Rochester. Mrs. Thrale finally ob- 
tained her daughters' consent and married Piozzi in June 1784. 
Upon her announcing the marriage to Johnson he replied in a letter 
of unjustifiable fury, to which she made a dignified reply. He ad- 
mitted that he had exceeded his right, thanked her for her kindness, 
and took leave with sad forebodings. She states that she replied 
affectionately ; but they never again met, as she was abroad until 
his death. 

Johnson, deprived of his old asylum, endeavoured to find solace 
in his old resources. In 1781 his friend John Hoole had formed 
a city club for him at the Queen's Arms, St. Paul's Churchyard. 
In the winter of 1 783-1 784 he collected a few survivors of the old 
Ivy Lane Club, who held some rather melancholy meetings. At 
the end of 1783 he formed another club at the Essex Head in Essex 
Street, kept by an old servant of Thrale 's. Among the members 
were Daines Barrington [q. v.]. Dr. Brocklesby [q. v.], Arthur 
Murphy [q. v.], Samuel Horsley [q. v.] (afterwards bishop of St. 
Asaph), and William Windham, who was strongly attached to him 
in his later years (a list of members is given in Nichols, Lit. Anecd. 
iv. 553). His infirmities, however, were now becoming oppressive, 
and his letters give painful details of his suffering. His spirits 
occasionally revived. He visited Oxford in June 1784 with Bos- 
well, staying with his old friend Adams, the master of Pembroke 
College, where he gave characteristic utterance to his fears of 
death. He dined for the last time at the Literary Club on 22 June. 
Boswell thought that some benefit to Johnson's health might be 
derived from a winter in Italy. After consulting Reynolds he 
applied to Thurlow, lord chancellor, for a grant which would 
enable Johnson to bear the expense. Thurlow made a favourable 
answer, which was communicated to Johnson by Reynolds and 

2H 



466 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

Boswell. Johnson was much affected, and mentioned that Brock- 
lesby had offered to settle upon him an annuity of lool. For some 
reason which does not appear, Thurlow's application was unsuc- 
cessful. He proposed, however, that Johnson should draw upon 
him for 500/. or 600/., and to lessen the obligation suggested a 
mortgage on the pension. Johnson declined the offer in a grateful 
letter, saying that his health had improved so far that by accepting 
he would be now ^advancing a false claim.' In the autumn he 
made his last visit to Lichfield and Ashbourne, returning to Lon- 
don on 16 Nov. In December he sent directions to Lichfield for 
epitaphs to be placed over his father, mother, and brother in St. 
Michael's Church, Lichfield. 

He now rapidly failed. He was attended by Brocklesby, He- 
berden, Cruikshank, and others, who refused fees; and his friends 
Burke, Langton, Reynolds, Windham, Miss Burney, and others, 
attended him affectionately. An account of his last illness (10 Nov. 
to 13 Dec.) was drawn up by Hoole. He begged Reynolds to for- 
give him a debt of 30/. ; to read his bible, and never to paint on a 
Sunday ; and gave pious admonitions to many friends. He sub- 
mitted courageously to operations for the relief of his dropsy, and 
called to his surgeon to cut deeper. He made his will on 8 and 9 
Dec, became composed after some agitation, and died quietly on 
13 Dec. 1784. He was buried on 20 Dec. in Westminster Abbey, 
in the presence of many members of the Literary Club, Taylor 
reading the funeral service. Complaints were made of the ab- 
sence of any special cathedral service ; Hawkins, as executor, not 
considering himself justified in paying the fees, which the cathe- 
dral authorities did not offer to remit (Twining, in Country 
Clergymen of the Eighteenth Century, p. 129 ; Steevens and Parr 
in J ohnsoniana) . A subscription opened by the Literary Club 
provided the monument by John Bacon [q. v.], with an epitaph by 
Dr. Parr, erected in St. Paul's in 1785 at a cost of eleven hun- 
dren guineas. From an account of a post-mortem examination, 
published by G. T. Squibb, it appears that Johnson suffered from 
gout, emphysema of the lungs, and granular disease of the kidneys. 
A plate of an emphysematous lung in Baillie's 'Morbid Anatomy' 
represents one of Johnson's. 

In his will Johnson describes his property, which amounted to 



THE LIFE OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 467 

about 2,300/. He left 200/. to the representatives of Thomas 
Innys, bookseller, in gratitude for help formerly given to his father ; 
100/. to a female servant; while the rest was to be applied to a 
provision for his negro servant Barber. In a codicil he left some 
sums to obscure relations, and a number of books to various 
friends. Boswell and others were omitted, probably from mere 
inadvertence. Langton, in consideration of 750/. left in his hands, 
was to pay an annuity of 70/. to Barber, who was also made residu- 
ary legatee. Barber settled at Lichfield. 

Johnson gave Boswell a list of his lodgings in London (Boswell, 
iii. 407). After leaving Castle Street (now East) about 1738, he 
lived successively in the Strand, Boswell Court, the Strand, Hol- 
born. Fetter Lane, Holborn, Gough Square (1749-59), Staple 
Inn, Gray's Inn, i Inner Temple Lane (present site of Johnson 
Buildings), 7 Johnson's Court, and 8 Bolt Court (the house in Bolt 
Court was burnt in 1819, Notes and Queries, ist ser. v. 232). 
Johnson's house at Lichfield was sold in 1785 for 235/. It was 
bought in 1887 for 800/. by Mr. G. H. Johnson of Southport (no 
relation), who preserves it without alteration. A statue by T. C. 
Lucas was erected at Lichfield in 1838, and a monument at Uttox- 
eter (commemorative of his penance there) in 1878 {Notes and 
Queries, 7th ser. iv. 402). 

Johnson received the degree of LL.D. from Dublin in 1765, 
and from Oxford in 1775; but scarcely ever himself used the 
familiar title of 'Dr. Johnson' (Boswell, ii. 332). His library 
was sold after his death by James Christie the elder [q. v.] for 
242/. gs. A sale-catalogue is in the Bodleian Library. 

A miniature of Johnson by an unknown painter before 1752 was 
engraved for Croker's edition. Reynolds painted him: (i) In 
1756 (Boswell's picture, often engraved, given in Hill's Boswell, 
vol. i. opposite p. 392) ; (2) in 1770 for Lucy Porter, arms raised 
with characteristic gesture; replica at Knole Park, shown at 
Guelph Exhibition, 1891; (3) in 1773 for Beauclerk, afterwards 
Langton's, replica at Streatham, afterwards Sir Robert Peel's, 
now in National Gallery; frontispiece to Hill's 'Boswell,' vol. 
iii.; (4) in 1778 for Malone; the picture which made Johnson 
say that he would not be 'blinking Sam' (Piozzi, Anecdotes, 
p. 248; Leslie and Taylor, Life of Reynolds, i. 147, 357, ii. 143, 



468 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

221). He was painted by Barry about 1781; for Kearsley, by 
S. C. Trotter, in 1782, an 'ugly fellow, like the original,' accord- 
ing to Johnson {Life of, 1785, published by Kearsley); by Miss 
Reynolds in 1783, called by the original 'Johnson's grimly ghost' 
(Piozzi, Letters, ii. 302) ; and by Opie, who never finished the 
picture, according to Hawkins, p. 569. A fine mezzotint from this 
by Townley is in the common-room of University College ; given 
in Hill's 'Boswell,' frontispiece to vol. iii. 245. Nollekens in 
1777 made a bust in clay, never put into marble. There is a draw- 
ing of it by Wivell reproduced in Hill's 'Boswell' (frontispiece 
to vol. ii.). 

Johnson had a tall, well-formed, and massive figure, indicative 
of great physical strength, but made grotesque by a strange infirm- 
ity. Madame d'Arblay speaks of his 'vast body in constant agi- 
tation, swaying backwards and forwards;' Miss Reynolds 
{Johnsoniana, p. 222) describes his apparently unconscious 'an- 
tics,' especially when he crossed a threshold. Sometimes when 
he was reading a book in the fields a mob would gather to stare at 
his strange gestures. Reynolds mentioned that he could constrain 
them when he pleased (Boswell, i. 144), though Boswell called 
them St. Vitus 's dance. He had queer tricks of touching posts 
and carefully counting steps, even when on horseback {ih. i. 484, 
V. 306; Whyte, Miscellanea Nova, pp. 49, 50). He was con- 
stantly talking or muttering prayers to himself. His face, accord- 
ing to Campbell {Diary, p. 337), had 'the aspect of an idiot.' 
He remained in silent abstraction till roused, or, as Tyers said 
(Boswell, v. 73), was like a ghost, who never speaks till he is 
spoken to. In spite of his infirmities he occasionally indulged in 
athletic performances. Mrs. Piozzi says that he sometimes 
hunted with Thrale. He understood boxing, and regretted the 
decline of prize-fighting, jumped, rowed, and shot, in a 'strange 
and unwieldy' way, to show that he was not tired after a 'fifty 
miles' chase,' and, according to Miss Reynolds, swarmed up a 
tree and beat a young lady in a foot-race when over fifty. Langton 
described to Best how at the age of fifty-five he had solemnly rolled 
down a hill. His courage was remarkable; he separated savage 
dogs, swam into dangerous pools, fired off an overloaded gun, and 
defended himself against four robbers single-handed {ih. ii. 299). 



THE LIFE OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 469 

His physical infirmities were partly accountable for roughness 
of manner. He suffered from deafness and was shortsighted to an 
extreme degree, although by minute attention he could often per- 
ceive objects with an accuracy which surprised his friends (Piozzi, 
Anecdotes, p. 287; Miss Reynolds in Johnsoniana; Madame 
d'Arblay, Diary, i. 85, ii. 174; Boswell, i. 41, &c.). He was 
thus often unable to observe the failings of his companions. 
Manners learnt in Grub Street were not delicate; his mode of 
gratifying a voracious appetite was even disgusting (Boswell, i. 
468); while his dress was slovenly, and he had 'no passion for 
clean linen' {ih. i. 397). He piqued himself, indeed, upon his 
courtesy; and, when not provoked by opposition, or unable to 
perceive the failings of others, was both dignified and polite. 
Nobody could pay more graceful compliments, especially to ladies, 
and he was always the first to make advances after a quarrel. 
His friends never ceased to love him ; and their testimony to the 
singular tenderness which underlay his roughness is unanimous. 
He loved children, and was even too indulgent to them; he re- 
joiced greatly when he persuaded Dr. Sumner to abolish holi- 
day tasks (Piozzi, Anecdotes, p. 21), and was most attentive to 
the wants of his servants. He was kind to animals, and bought 
oysters himself for his cat Hodge, that his servants might not 
be prejudiced against it (Boswell, iv. 178). He loved the poor, 
as Mrs. Piozzi says, as she never saw any one else do; and 
tended to be indiscriminate in his charity. He never spent, he 
says, more than 70/. or 80/. of his pension upon himself. Miss 
Reynolds was first attracted by hearing that he used to put pen- 
nies into the hands of outcast children sleeping in the streets, 
that they might be able to buy a breakfast. Boswell (iv. 321) 
tells of his carrying home a poor outcast woman from the streets 
and doing his best to restore her to an honest life. His services 
to poor friends by lending his pen or collecting money from the 
rich were innumerable. His constantly expressed contempt for 
'sentimental' grievances was not, as frequently happens, a mask 
for want of sympathy, though it was often so interpreted. He 
not only felt for all genuine suffering, from death, poverty, and 
sickness to the wounded vanity of his friends, but did his utmost 
to alleviate it. 



470 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

This depth of tender feeling was, in fact, the foundation of John- 
son's character. His massive and keenly logical, but narrow and 
rigid intellect, was the servant of strong passions, of prejudices 
imbibed through early association, and of the constitutional melan- 
choly which made him a determined pessimist. He feared mad- 
ness, and constantly expressed his dread of the next world, and 
his conviction of the misery of this. His toryism and high-church - 
manship had become part of his nature. He looked leniently 
upon superstitions, such as ghosts and second-sight, which ap- 
peared to fall in with his religious beliefs, while his strong common 
sense often made him even absurdly sceptical in ordinary matters. 
According to Mrs. Piozzi (Anecdotes, pp. 138, 141) he would not 
believe in the earthquake at Lisbon for six months, and ridiculed 
the statement that red-hot balls had been used at the siege of 
Gibraltar. His profound respect for truth, emphasised by all his 
friends, had made him impatient of loose talk, and a rigid sifter 
of evidence. His melancholy, as often happens, was combined 
with a strong sense of humour. Hawkins (p. 258), Murphy (p. 
139), and Mrs. Piozzi (Anecdotes, pp. 205, 298) agree that he 
was admirable at sheer buffoonery, and Madame d'Arblay de- 
scribes his powers of mimicry. No man could laugh more 
heartily; like a rhinoceros, said Tom Davies (Boswell, ii. 378) ; 
or as Boswell describes it, so as to be heard from Temple Bar 
to Fleet Ditch (ii. 268). The faculty shows itself little in his 
earlier writings. His sesquipedalian style appears in his early 
efforts, and seems to have been partly caught from the seven- 
teenth-century writers, such as Sir Thomas Browne, whom 
he studied and admired; and in whose high-built latinised 
phraseology there was something congenial. The simplicity 
and clearness of the style accepted in his youth affected his taste, 
and he acquired the ponderosity without the finer qualities of his 
model. His love of talk diminished his mannerism in later years ; 
and, at his worst, his phrases are not mere verbiage, but an awk- 
ward embodiment of very keen dialectical power. The strong 
sense, shrewd and humorous observations which appear in his 
'Lives of the Poets' give him the very first rank among all the 
talkers of whom we have any adequate report. Carlyle calls him 
the last of the tories. He was the typical embodiment of the 



THE LIFE OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 471 

strength and weakness, the common sense masked by grotesque 
prejudice, and the genuine sentiment underlying a rough outside, 
which characterise the 'true-born Englishman of the eighteenth 
century.' He was the first author who, living by his pen alone, 
preserved absolute independence of character, and was as much 
respected for his high morality as for his intellectual power. 

A full list of Johnson's works, drawn up by Boswell, is in Hill's 
'Boswell,' i. 16-24. The works, published separately, are: i. 
Abridgment and translation of Lobo's 'Voyage to Abyssinia,' 
1735. 2. 'London,' 1738. 3. 'Marmor Norf olciense ; or an 
Essay on an Ancient Prophetical Inscription in Monkish Rhyme, 
lately discovered near Lynne in Norfolk by Probus Britannicus,' 
1739 (also in Gent. Mag.). 4. 'Proposals for Publishing "Biblio- 
theca Harleiana," a Catalogue of the Library of the Earl of Oxford ' 
(also in Gent. Mag., and prefixed to first volume of Catalogue), 
1742. 5. 'Life of Richard Savage,' 1744. 6. 'Miscellaneous 
Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, with Remarks on Sir 
T[homas] H[armer's] Edition of Shakespeare, and Proposals for a 
New Edition of that Poet,' 1745. 7. 'Plan for a Dictionary 
of the English Language, addressed to Philip Dormer, Earl of 
Chesterfield,' 1747. 8. 'The Vanity of Human Wishes, being 
the Tenth Satire of Juvenal Imitated,' 1749. 9. 'Irene,' 1749; 
2nd edit. 1754. 10. The 'Rambler,' 1750-2 (see above). 
II. Papers in the 'Adventurer,' 1753 (see above). 12. 'A Dic- 
tionary, with a Grammar and History of the English Language,' 

1755. Five editions appeared during his lifetime; the eleventh 
in 1 8 16. A verbatim reprint of the author's last edition was 
published by Bohn in 1854. An abridgment by Johnson ap- 
peared in 1756 and was several times reprinted. Supplements, 
abridgments, and editions by other authors have also appeared. 
13. 'Account of an Attempt to ascertain the Longitude at Sea 
. . .' (for Z. Williams), 1755 (see above). 14. 'Life of Sir 
Thomas Browne,' prefixed to new edition of 'Christian Morals,' 

1756. 15. 'The Idler,' 1758-1760 (see above). 16. 'Ras- 
selas. Prince of Abyssinia,' 1759; a facsimile of the first edition, 
with a bibliography by James Macaulay, was published in 1884. 
17. 'Life of Ascham,' prefixed to 'Ascham's English Works,' 
by Bennet, 1763. 18. 'Plays of William Shakespeare, with 



472 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

Notes,' 8 vols. 1765. 19. 'The False Alarm,' 1770. 
20. 'Thoughts on the late Transactions respecting Falkland 
Islands,' 1771. 21. 'The Patriot,' 1774. 22. 'A Journey- 
to the Western Isles of Scotland,' 1775. 23. 'Taxation no 
Tyranny,' 1775. 24. 'Prefaces Biographical and Critical to 
the Works of the most Eminent English Poets,' 1779 and 1781. 
Published separately as 'Lives of the English Poets.' The edi- 
tion by Peter Cunningham appeared in 1854; the six chief lives, 
with preface by Matthew Arnold, in 1878, and a complete edition, 
begun by Dr. Birkbeck Hill and completed by H. Spencer Scott, 
in 1905 (Oxford, 3 vols.). 

Johnson's 'Prayers and Meditations,' edited by G. Strahan, 
appeared in 1785; and his 'Letters' to Madame Piozzi in 1788. 
'Sermons left for Publication,' by John Taylor, which appeared 
in 1788 and passed through several editions, have also been at- 
tributed to him. 'An Account of the Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson 
from his Birth to his Eleventh Year, written by Himself (1805) 
was a fragment saved from some papers burnt by him before his 
death, and not seen by Boswell. Johnson also contributed many 
articles to the 'Gentleman's Magazine' from 1738 to 1748; some 
to the 'Universal Visitor' in 1756; and some to the 'Literary 
Magazine' of the same year. He wrote many prefaces, dedica- 
tions, and other trifles for his friends. 

His collected works were edited by Hawkins in 1787 in 11 vols., 
to which two, edited by Stockdale, were added. Murphy edited 
them in II vols, in 1796. The Oxford edition of 1825 was edited 
by Francis Pearson Walesby, fellow of Lincoln College, and pro- 
fessor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. This contains the works in 
9 vols., and the 'Parliamentary Debates' (also published sepa- 
rately, 2 vols. 1787) in 2 vols. 



t. 



THE LIFE OF RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN 473 

THE LIFE OF RICHARD BRINSLEY 
SHERIDAN 

FRASER RAE 
[From the Dictionary of National Biography.] 

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751-1816), statesman and 
dramatist, born 30 Oct. 1751 at 12 Dorset Street, Dublin, was 
grandson of Thomas Sheridan (1687-1738) [q. v.], and son of 
Thomas Sheridan (17 19-1788) [q. v.]. He received the rudiments 
of learning from his father, and from the age of seven till eight and 
a half attended a school in Dublin kept by Samuel Whyte. Then 
he rejoined his parents, who had migrated to London, and he never 
revisited his native city. In 1762 he was sent to Harrow school, 
where he remained till 1768, two years after his mother's death. 
Subsequently a private tutor, Lewis Ker, directed his studies in 
his father's house in London, while Angelo instructed him in 
fencing and horsemanship. 

At the end of 1770 Sheridan's father settled in Bath and taught 
elocution. His children became acquainted with those of Thomas 
Linley (i 732-1 795) [q. v.], a composer and teacher of music, who 
had given Sheridan's mother lessons in singing. One of Sheridan's 
friends at Harrow was Nathaniel Brassey Halhed [q. v.], who went 
to Oxford from Harrow. With him Sheridan carried on a corre- 
spondence from Bath. They projected a literary periodical called 
'Hernan's Miscellany,' of which the first number was written 
but not published; and they prepared a metrical vers"on of the 
epistles of Aristaenetus, which appeared in 1771, and in a second 
edition in 1773. Halhed translated the epistles, and Sheridan 
revised and edited them. Another volume of translations from 
the same author which Sheridan undertook never saw the light. 
A farce called ' Ixion ' was written by Halhed, recast by Sheridan, 
and renamed 'Jupiter.' It was offered > Garx^ick and Foote, 
but not accepted by either. Sheridan wrote two sets of verses, 
which appeared in the 'Bath Chronicle' during 1771; the title of 
one set was ' Clio's Protest or the Picture Varnished ; ' of the other 
'The Ridotto of Bath,' which was reprinted and had a large sale. 



474 



FRASER RAE 



Sheridan's letters to Halhed have not been preserved; those 
from Halhed contain many references to Miss Linley, who sang 
in oratorios at Oxford, and for whom Halhed expressed great ad- 
miration, although he failed to excite a corresponding feeling in 
her. Desiring to escape from the persecution of Major Mathews, 
an unworthy admirer, Miss Linley appealed to Sheridan to escort 
her to France, where she hoped to find refuge and repose in a 
convent. The scheme had the approval and support of Sheridan's 
sisters. At the end of March 1772 Sheridan, Miss Linley, and 
a lady's maid left Bath for London, where Mr. Ewart, a friend of 
Mr. Sheridan, gave them a passage to Dunkirk in one of his vessels. 
Sheridan's younger sister, Elizabeth, who was in Miss Linley's 
confidence as well as her brother's, gives the following account of 
what followed: 'After quitting Dunkirk, Mr. Sheridan was more 
explicit with Miss Linley as to his views in accompanying her to 
France. He told her that he could not be content to leave her in 
a convent unless she consented to a previous marriage, which had 
all along been the object of his hopes ; and she must be aware that, 
after the step she had taken, she could not appear in England but 
as his wife. Miss Linley, who really preferred him greatly to 
any person, was not difficult to persuade, and at a village not far 
from Calais the marriage ceremony was performed by a priest 
who was known to be often employed on such occasions.' This 
marriage, if contracted as described, was valid ; but neither of the 
parties to it regarded the ceremony as more binding than a be- 
trothal. Her own feelings were subsequently expressed in a letter 
to him: 'You are sensible when I left Bath I had not an idea of 
you but as a friend. It was not your person that gained my affec- 
tion. No, it was that delicacy, that tender compassion, that inter- 
est which you seemed to take in my welfare, that were the motives 
which induced me to love you' {Biography of Sheridan, i. 255). 

The lady's father followed the fugitives and took his daughter 
back to Bath. Meanwhile Mathews had published a letter de- 
nouncing Sheridan 'as a liar and a treacherous scoundrel,' and 
on their meeting in London a duel with swords ended with the 
disarming of Mathews, who was compelled to beg his life and to 
publish an apology in the 'Bath Chronicle.' On 2 July 1772 a 
second duel was fought, in which Sheridan was seriously wounded. 



THE LIFE OF RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN 475 

After his recovery, as his father and Mr. Linley both objected to 
his marrying Miss Linley, he was sent to Waltham Abbey in Essex 
on 27 Aug. in order that he might continue his studies undisturbed. 
He remained at Waltham Abbey till April 1773, reading hard and 
writing many letters to his friends, of whom the chief was Thomas 
Grenville (i 755-1846) [q. v.]. He wrote to him: 'I keep regular 
hours, use a great deal of exercise, and study very hard. There is 
a very ingenious man here with whom, besides, I spend two hours 
every evening in mathematicks, mensuration, astronomy.' Charles 
Brinsley, the son of Sheridan by his second marriage, has recorded 
that his father left behind him ' six copybooks, each filled with notes 
and references to mathematics, carefully written by Mr. S. at an 
early age;' that is, probably at Waltham Abbey. He told his 
friend Grenville : ' I am determined to gain all the knowledge that 
I can bring within my reach. I will make myself as much master 
as I can of French and Italian.' Yet his inclination was for 
the bar, and he was entered at the Middle Temple on 6 
April 1773. 

On the 13th of the same month he at length married Miss Linley, 
with her father's consent. His own father looked upon the union, 
and wrote about it, as a disgrace. The young couple went to live 
at East Burnham. In the winter of 1773 they lived with Stephen 
Storace [q. v.] in London, and in the spring of 1774 took a house 
in Orchard Street. Sheridan wrote much at this period, a scheme 
for a training school for children of the nobility and comments on 
Chesterfield's 'Letters' being among the subjects he treated; 
but he published nothing with his name. On 17 Nov. 1774 he 
informed his father-in-law that a comedy by him would be in 
rehearsal at Covent Garden Theatre in a few days. This comedy 
was 'The Rivals,' and it was performed for the first time on 17 
Jan. 1775. It failed, was withdrawn, and then performed in a 
revised version on 28 Jan. From that date it has remained one of 
the most popular among modern comedies. A farce, ' St. Patrick's 
Day, or the Scheming Lieutenant,' was written for the benefit 
of Mr. Clinch, who had made his mark in the 'Rivals' as Sir 
Lucius O 'Trigger, and it was played on 2 May. It was favourably 
received, and repeated several times' at Covent Garden. A comic 
opera, 'The Duenna,' was represented at Covent Garden on 



476 FRASER RAE 

21 Nov. 1775 and on seventy-four other nights during the season, 
a success which was then unprecedented. 

By the end of 1775 Sheridan had become a favourite with play- 
goers. Before the end of the next year he was manager of Drury 
Lane Theatre in succession to Garrick, having entered into part- 
nership with Mr. Linley and Dr. Ford, and become the proprietor 
of Garrick's share in the theatre, for which Garrick received 
35,000/. Two years later the share of Lacy, the partner of Garrick, 
which was valued at the same sum, was bought by the new pro- 
prietors. Mr. Brander Mathews has pointed out, in his intro- 
duction to Sheridan's 'Comedies' (pp. 30, 31), that the money 
was chiefly raised on mortgage ; that when Sheridan bought one- 
seventh of the shares in 1776 he only had to find 1,300/. in cash; 
and that when he became the proprietor in 1778 of the half of the 
shares, this sum was returned to him. 

Drury Lane Theatre was opened under Sheridan's management 
on 21 Sept. 1776. A prelude written for the occasion by Colman, 
containing a neat compliment to Garrick, was then performed. 
On 16 Jan. 1777 Sheridan gave 'The Rivals' for the first time at 
Drury Lane, and on 24 Feb. 'A Trip to Scarborough,' which he 
had adapted from Vanbrugh's 'Relapse;' but he achieved his 
crowning triumph as a dramatist on 8 May in that year, when 
'The School for Scandal' was put on the stage. The play nar- 
rowly escaped suppression. Sheridan told the House of Commons 
on 3 Dec. 1793 that a license for its performance had been refused, 
and that it was only through his personal influence with Lord 
Hertford, the lord chamberlain, that the license was granted the 
day before that fixed for the performance. On 29 Oct. 1779 
Sheridan's farce, 'The Critic,' and, on 24 May 1799, his patriotic 
melodrama, 'Pizarro,' were produced at Drury Lane. With 
'Pizarro' his career as a dramatist ended. 

Sheridan had meanwhile become as great a favourite in society 
and in parliament as among playgoers. In March 1777 he was 
elected a member of the Literary Club on the motion of Dr. 
Johnson, and he lived to be one of the oldest of the thirty-five 
members. Having made the acquaintance of Charles James Fox, 
he joined him in his efforts for political reform, and desired to 
enter parliament as his supporter. He failed in his candidature 



THE LIFE OF RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN 477 

for Honiton, but he was returned for Stafford on 12 Sept. 1780. 
A letter in his favour from the Duchess of Devonshire proved of 
great service. On the proposition of Fitzpatrick, he was elected 
a member of Brooks's Club on 2 Nov. 1780. Two years before, he 
had been twice proposed by Fox and rejected, the first time on 
28 Nov., the second on 25 Dec. 1778 (candidates' book, Brooks's 
Club). 

His first speech in parliament was made on 20 Nov. 1780, in 
defence of a charge of bribery which Whit worth, his defeated 
opponent at Stafford, had brought against him, and the speech 
was both well received and successful in its object. The allegation 
that he had failed was circulated for the first time by Moore forty- 
five years after the speech was delivered (cf. Fraser Rae, Biog- 
raphy, i. 359). He became a frequent speaker, and by common 
consent was soon ranked as highly among parliamentary orators 
as among dramatic writers. His opposition to the war in America 
was deemed so effective by the representatives of congress that a 
thank-offering of 20,000/. was made to him. He wisely and 
gracefully declined to accept the gift (Moore, Diary, i. 212, 213). 
In 1782 his marked abilities received more practical recognition. 
Lord Rockingham, who then became premier for the second time, 
appointed him under-secretary for foreign affairs. After the death 
of Rockingham on i July, Shelburne was appointed prime minister. 
Sheridan, with other colleagues in the Rockingham administration, 
refused to serve under him. But he returned to ofhce on 21 Feb. 
1783 as secretary to the treasury when the coalition ministry, 
with the Duke of Portland as figure-head, was formed. The 
ministry was dismissed by the king on the i8th of the following 
December. During the brief interval, Sheridan addressed the 
house twenty-six times on matters concerning the treasury. 

Sheridan made the personal acquaintance of the Prince of Wales 
at Devonshire House soon after he entered parliament, and thence- 
forth acted as his confidential adviser. He gave advice and drafted 
documents for the prince in 1788, when the king was suffering 
from mental disorder, and it was proposed to appoint the prince 
as regent subject to certain restrictions. With Fox and Lord 
Loughborough he injudiciously upheld the right of the prince to 
assume the regency without the sanction of parliament. It was 



478 FRASER RAE 

arranged that, should the king not recover and should a whig 
administration be formed by the regent, the office of treasurer of 
the navy would be assigned to Sheridan; but the king's recovery 
rendered the plan nugatory. Sheridan was conspicuous in the 
proceedings against Warren Hastings [q. v.]. He attended the 
committee which examined witnesses in connection with charges 
whereupon to frame an impeachment, and when the articles were 
settled it fell to him to obtain the assent of the house to the one re- 
lating to the begums or princesses of Oude. The speech in which 
he brought the matter before the house on 7 Feb. 1787 occupied 
five hours and forty minutes in delivery, and was one of the most 
memorable in the annals of parliament. When he sat down 
'the whole house — the members, peers, and strangers — in- 
voluntarily joined in a tumult of applause, and adopted a mode 
of expressing their approbation, new and irregular in that house, 
by loudly and repeatedly clapping their hands' {Parliamentary 
Hist. XXV. 294). Pitt moved the adjournment of the debate on the 
ground that the minds of members were too agitated to discuss the 
question with coolness and judicially. No full report of the speech 
has been preserved ; the best appeared in the ' London Chronicle ' 
for 8 Feb. 1787. The excitement which Sheridan had aroused in 
the House of Commons spread throughout the nation. Sheridan 
began his speech as a manager of the impeachment in Westminster 
Hall on 3 June 1788. The event was the topic of the day. Fifty 
pounds were cheerfully given for a seat. His speech lasted, not, 
as Macaulay wrote, 'two days,' but for several hours on Tuesday 
the 3rd, Friday the 6th, Tuesday the loth, and Friday the 13th of 
June. Gibbon asserted that Sheridan sank back into Burke's 
arms after uttering the concluding words, 'My lords, I have done.' 
Macaulay repeated this story with embellishments, writing that 
'Sheridan contrived, with a knowledge of stage effect which his 
father might have envied, to sink back, as if exhausted, into the 
arms of Burke, who hugged him with the energy of generous ad- 
miration' (Collected Works, vi. 6^^). Sir Gilbert Elliot, one of 
the managers who sat beside Sheridan, wrote to his wife, 'Burke 
caught him in his arms as he sat down. ... I have myself en- 
joyed that embrace on such an occasion, and know its value ' {Life 
and Letters, i. 219). Sheridan paid Gibbon a graceful compli- 



THE LIFE OF RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN 479 

ment by speaking of 'his luminous page.' Moore is responsible 
for the fiction that Sheridan afterwards said he meant 'voluminous.' 
Dudley Long told Gibbon that Sheridan had spoken about his 
'voluminous pages' (Sir Gilbert Elliot, Life and Letters, i. 
219). 

The trial of Hastings lasted till 1794, and Sheridan was con- 
stant in attendance. On 14 May in that year he replied to the 
arguments of Plumer and Law, counsel for Hastings, relative to his 
charge concerning the begums, and the speech which he then de- 
livered was described by Professor Smyth, who heard it, as an 
extraordinary rhetorical triumph (Memoir of Mr. Sheridan, pp. 
31-5). While the trial was in progress Sheridan suffered much 
domestic affliction. His father died at Margate on 14 Aug. 1788. 
Sheridan thereupon took charge of his sister Elizabeth, and, on 
her marriage with Henry Lefanu, provided for her maintenance. 
His wife died at Hot Wells on 28 June 1792. He remarried on 
27 April 1795, his second wife being Esther Jane, eldest daughter 
of Newton Ogle, dean of Winchester. 

He was unremitting in the discharge of his parliamentary duties, 
and he gave special attention to finance, saying to Pitt, on 1 1 March 
1793, that he did not require to watch with vigilance all matters 
relating to the public income and outlay, as 'he had uniformly 
acted on that principle upon all revenue questions.' He laboured 
to abate the rigour of the game laws and to repress the practice of 
gaming. Whenever a question relating to social improvement and 
progress was before the house he gave his support to it, and w^hen, 
in 1787, the convention of Scottish royal boroughs had failed in 
getting a sympathiser with their grievances, they enlisted him in 
their service, and they thanked him in after days for his earnest- 
ness in their cause, which he twelve times upheld in the house. 
What he had vainly urged between 1787 and 1794 was effected for 
the Scottish burgesses in 1833 in a reformed parliament. The 
parliamentary reform which rendered this improvement possible 
had been advocated by Sheridan, and, when others despaired of 
its attainment, he wrote, on 21 May 1782, to Thomas Grenville: 
'We were bullied outrageously about our poor parHamentary 
reform; but it will do at last in spite of you all' {Courts and 
Cabinets of George III, i. 28). 



480 FRASER RAE 

When the revolution in France tried men's souls in Great 
Britain and made many friends of progress recant in a panic the 
convictions of their wiser years, Sheridan stood firm with Fox in 
maintaining the right of the French to form their own government, 
and upheld, with him, the duty of this country to recognise and 
treat with any government which exercised authority there. The 
Earl of Mornington (afterwards Marquis Wellesley) made an 
elaborate appeal to the house on 21 Jan. 1794 to prosecute the war 
with France till the French should have discarded their republican 
principles. The reply on this occasion was one of Sheridan's 
finest debating speeches, and a most able argument against ille- 
gitimate interference with the domestic concerns of France. He 
was quite as ready, however, to oppose the French when they began 
to propagate their principles by the sword. The fleets at Ports- 
mouth and the Nore mutinied in May and June 1797, partly at 
the instigation of French agents. Then Sheridan gave warm sup- 
port and good advice to the government, and largely contributed 
to the removal of the danger which menaced the country. Dundas 
said on behalf of the ministry that 'the country was highly in- 
debted to Sheridan for his fair and manly conduct ' {Parliamentary 
Hist, xxxvi. 804). When invasion was threatened in 1803 by 
Bonaparte, he urged unconditional resistance, and declared in the 
house on 10 Aug. that no peace ought to be made so long as a 
foreign soldier trod British soil. Moreover he urged the house to 
encourage the volunteers who had assembled in defence of their 
homes, while he set the example by acting as lieutenant-colonel 
of the St. James's volunteer corps. The revolt of the Spaniards 
against the French invaders was lauded by him, and he was earnest 
in urging the government to send Sir Arthur Wellesley (afterwards 
Duke of Wellington) to represent 'the enthusiasm of England' 
in the cause of Spain struggling against the yoke of Bonaparte. 
His last speech in parliament, which was delivered on 21 June 181 2, 
ended with a heart-stirring appeal to persevere in opposing the 
tyranny to which Bonaparte was subjecting Europe, and with the 
assertion that, if the British nation were to share the fate of others, 
the historian might record that, when after spending all her treasure 
and her choicest blood the nation fell, there fell with her ' all the 
best securities for the charities of human life, for the power and 



THE LIFE OF RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN 481 

honour, the fame, the glory, and the liberties of herseK and the 
whole civilised world.' 

Sheridan was conspicuous and energetic among the opponents 
of the union between Great Britain and Ireland. He said on 23 
Jan. 1799, when the subject was formally brought before the house, 
'My country has claims upon me which I am not more proud to 
acknowledge than ready to liquidate to the full measure of my 
ability.' He held that the bargain concluded in 1782 between 
the two countries was final, and also that, if a new arrangement 
were to be made, it should be based on 'the manifest, fair, and 
free consent and approbation of the parliaments of the two countries.' 
Twenty-five members of parliament followed his lead. Mr. 
Lecky affirms that he fought 'a hopeless battle in opposition with 
conspicuous earnestness and courage' {History of England in 
Eighteenth Century, viii. 356). 

After the union was carried and Addington had succeeded Pitt 
as prime minister, it was in Sheridan's power, as it may have been 
previously, to enter the House of Lords by changing the party to 
which he had belonged since entering political life, but he then 
declined, as he phrased it, ' to hide his head in a coronet ' {Memoir 
of Lady Dufferin, by her son, p. 17). He sometimes dined with 
Addington when he was premier, and Addington records that one 
night Sheridan said to him, ' My visits to you may possibly be mis- 
understood by my friends : but I hope you know, Mr. Addington, 
that I have an unpurchasable mind' {Life of Lord Sidmouth, ii. 
105). When Pitt died in 1806 and the ministry of 'all the talents' 
was formed, Sheridan held the office in it of treasurer of the navy, 
with the rank of privy councillor. After Fox's death in the same 
year he succeeded him as member for Westminster; but he was 
not called, as he had a right to anticipate he would have been, 
to lead the whig party in the commons. 

He was rejected for Westminster at the general election in 1807, 
and found a seat at Ilchester which he held till 181 2. He had been 
proposed in 1807 as a candidate for the county of Wexford without 
his knowledge, and his election seemed assured, as the electors 
expressed their readiness to vote for 'the great Sheridan.' Mr. 
Colclough, who proposed him as a fellow candidate, was challenged 
by Mr. Alcock, one of his opponents, to fight a duel, and was shot 
21 



482 FRASER RAE 

through the heart. The supporters of both Colclough and Sheridan 
consequently held aloof from the poll, and Mr. Alcock and Colonel 
Ram were declared to have been duly elected {Personal Sketches 
of his Own Times, by Sir Jonah Barrington, i. 302, 305). Sheridan 
endeavoured in 181 2 to be returned again for Stafford; but the 
younger generation of burgesses was as little disposed as the elder 
to vote for any candidate unless he paid each of them the accustomed 
fee of five guineas, and, as Sheridan had not the money, he lost the 
election. 

As a dramatic writer Sheridan had no equal among his con- 
temporaries, and as manager and chief proprietor of Drury Lane 
Theatre he maintained the popularity of the theatre and obtained 
from it an average income of 10,000/. In 1791 the theatre was 
pronounced unsafe, and it had to be pulled down and rebuilt, 
and the new house was much larger than the old one. The esti- 
mated cost was 150,000/. ; this was exceeded, however, by 75,000/. 
While the theatre was rebuilding, the company played at the theatre 
in the Haymarket, and the expenses there exceeded the receipts. 
The first performance in the new building took place on 21 April 
1794. With mistaken chivalry Sheridan rashly undertook to de- 
fray out of his own pocket the liabilities which had been incurred 
owing to the expenses exceeding the estimate. Whatever prospect 
he may have had of achieving this chivalrous but quixotic under- 
taking was dashed to the ground on 24 Feb. 1809, when the new 
theatre was destroyed by fire. When the news reached the House 
of Commons that the theatre was burning, the unusual compliment 
was paid him by Lord Temple and Mr. Ponsonby of moving the 
adjournment of the debate 'in consequence of the extent of the 
calamity which the event just communicated to the house would 
bring upon a respectable individual, a member of that house.' 
While grateful for the kindness displayed towards himself, he 
objected to the motion on the ground that 'whatever might be 
the extent of the individual calamity, he did not consider it of 
a nature to interrupt their proceedings.' Two years later the 
house displayed a like feeling of admiration and sympathy. It was 
then proposed to authorise the building of another theatre, and 
Sheridan contended that the proprietors of the Drury Lane patent 
ought to be the persons entrusted with this privilege. His conduct 



THE LIFE OF RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN 483 

with regard to Drury Lane Theatre was eulogised by political 
opponents as well as by political friends, General Tarleton calling 
upon the house 'to consider the immortal works of Mr. Sheridan 
and the stoical philosophy with which in that house he had wit- 
nessed the destruction of his property. Surely some indulgence was 
due to such merit.' {Pari. Debates, xix. 1142, 1145). 

None of the many effective speeches which Sheridan delivered 
in the house did him more honour, or has given him more deserved 
credit, than those relating to the liberty of the public press at a time 
when the press had fewer friends among statesmen than at present. 
He was magnanimous in upholding the liberty of unfettered print- 
ing, because, as he declared to Sir Richard Phillips, his life had 
been made miserable by calumnies in the newspapers. The greater 
his magnanimity and statesmanship, then, in declaring, as he did 
in the House of Commons on 4 April 1798, 'that the press should 
be unfettered, that its freedom should be, as indeed it was, com- 
mensurate with the freedom of the people and the well-being of 
a virtuous State; on that account he thought that even one hun- 
dred libels had better be ushered into the world than one prosecution 
be instituted which might endanger the liberty of the press of this 
country.' At a later day he condemned the conduct of the benchers 
of Lincoln's Inn, and shamed them into rescinding a regulation 
which they had passed for excluding from the bar any member 
of the inn who contributed to newspapers. 

His monetary affairs, after the burning of Drury Lane Theatre 
in 1809, were greatly involved, and the sums owing to him were 
withheld while his creditors clamoured for payment. A committee, 
presided over by Mr. Whitbread, for rebuilding the theatre gave 
him shares for much of the amount due to him, but by retaining 
12,000/. in cash hindered him from being returned to parliament 
for Stafford, and caused him to be arrested for debt in August 1813, 
when he became an inmate of a sponging-house in Took's Court, 
Cursitor Street, till Whitbread handed over the sum required. 
It was not known till after Whitbread's self-inflicted death, on 
6 July 181 5, that a disease of the brain was the explanation of some 
actions which would have been otherwise inexplicable. Sheridan's 
own health had been impaired several years before his life ended. 
He had long suffered from insomnia; in his later years varicose 



484 FRASER RAE 

veins in his legs gave him much pain and made walking difficult. 
He had always been a jovial companion, and few who enjoyed his 
society could have surmised that in private he was subject to 
fits of depression which made life a burden. In common with 
his contemporaries he frequently drank wine to excess, yet without 
drinking as much as many others, a small quantity affecting him 
more seriously. Sir Gilbert Elliot records that at a dinner in 1788 
Sheridan drank much wine, but that Grey drank far more. Sheri- 
dan preferred claret till his later and darker years, and then brandy 
had a baneful fascination for him. Nevertheless, he weaned him- 
self from the bad habit, and he became very temperate latterly, 
drinking nothing but water. 

Mental worries about the health of his elder son Tom, wlio went 
to the Cape of Good Hope in 181 3, without being cured there of 
consumption and about the means wherewith to satisfy the 
demands of inexorable creditors, to which an abscess in the throat 
added a physical torment, compelled him to take to his bed in the 
spring of 181 6. He was then occupying the house at 17 Savile 
Row. A writ was served upon him when he could no longer leave 
the house, and the sheriff's officer consented to remain there, and, 
by so doing, hindered other creditors from giving further annoyance. 
It was incorrectly announced in the newspapers that Sheridan 
was in dire poverty, and offers of assistance were made ; but these 
were declined because they were not required. Several years after- 
wards a story was circulated by Croker, on the authority of George 
IV, to the effect that Sheridan's last hours upon earth were those 
of a neglected pauper. The story is the reverse of the truth. 
Charles Brinsley, the son of Sheridan by his second marriage, wrote 
from Fulham Palace, on Sunday, 7 July 1816, where his mother 
and he were staying, to his half-brother at the Cape, eight days 
after their father's death, that 'you will be soothed by learning 
that our father's death was unaccompanied by suffering, that he 
almost slumbered into death, and that the reports which you may 
have seen in the newspapers of the privations and the want of 
comforts which he endured are unfounded; that he had every 
attention and comfort that could make a deathbed easy.' Mrs. 
Parkhurst, who was acquainted with the Sheridans, wrote to Dublin 
from London to Mrs. Lefanu, his elder sister, a fortnight after his 



THE LIFE OF RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN 485 

death: 'Mr. Sheridan wanted neither medical aid, the attention 
of true affection, the consolations of piety, nor the exertions of 
friendship. He had three of the first physicians of London every 
day; his wife, his son, and his brother-in-law were constantly 
with him ; the bishop of London (Howley, afterwards archbishop 
of Canterbury) saw him many times, and (Lord) Lauderdale did 
all he could for the regulation of his affairs.' 

The funeral was arranged by Lord Lauderdale and Peter Moore 
[q. v.], member for Coventry, both being Sheridan's old and at- 
tached friends, and the coffin was taken, for the sake of convenience, 
to Peter Moore's house in Great George Street. The remains 
were laid in Westminster Abbey, and the funeral was on a far 
grander scale than those of Pitt and Fox, the flower of the nobility 
uniting with the most notable men of letters and learning in paying 
the last homage to Sheridan. The Duke of Wellington and his 
brother, the Marquis Wellesley, who were absent, expressed in 
writing their regret that their absence was unavoidable. 

As a dramatist Sheridan carried the comedy of manners in this 
country to its highest pitch, and his popularity as a writer for the 
stage is exceeded by that of Shakespeare alone. As an orator he 
impressed the House of Commons more deeply than almost any 
predecessor, and as a politician in a venal age he preserved his 
independence and purity. He left debts which were trifling com- 
pared with those of Pitt, and which, unlike those of Pitt, 
were defrayed by his family. He never received a pension, 
though he was as much entitled to one as Burke. The Prince 
of Wales induced him to accept the office of receiver of the 
duchy of Cornwall, with a salary of about 800/., and this he 
enjoyed for the last few years of his life. His widow and his 
son by her inherited a property in 1 nd which he had bought, and 
which sufficed to maintain them during the remainder of their lives. 

Throughout life Sheridan was the victim of misrepresentation. 
He declared to Sir Richard Phillips in his closing years that his 
life 'had been miserable by calumnies.' To these words, taken 
from a manuscript by Sir Richard supplied to Moore, but sup- 
pressed, may be added the following from a manuscript which 
Sheridan left behind him : ' It is a fact that I have scarcely ever 
in my life contradicted any one calumny against me ... I have 



4.86 FRASER RAE 

since on reflection ceased to approve my own conduct in these 
respects. Were I to lead my life over again, I should act other- 
wise.' After his death many stories about him have been cir- 
culated and accepted as genuine, though they are counterfeit. 
They begin when he was seven years old, and end when he was in 
his coffin; the first being that his mother told Samuel Whyte he 
was an 'impenetrable dunce,' a statement for which not a shadow 
of proof has been given ; and the last that he was arrested for debt 
when laid out for burial, a statement which is as ridiculous and 
unauthentic as the other. The story is often told of his hoaxing 
the House of Commons, and many correspondents of 'Notes and 
Queries' have exercised their ingenuity in describing the kind of 
spurious or imitation Greek which he is assumed to have used, 
the truth being that he once corrected Lord Belgrave, who mis- 
applied a passage of Demosthenes, which he had quoted in the 
original. He is finely characterised in a few words written by 
Mrs. Parkhurst in the letter from which a quotation has been 
made above: 'He took away with him a thousand charitable 
actions, a heart in which there was no hard part, a spirit free from 
envy and malice, and he is gone in the undiminished brightness 
of his talent, gone before pity had withered admiration.' On 
the morning after his death the ' Times ' eulogised him as a member 
of the legislature in terms which could not be justly applied to 
many of his colleagues and contemporaries : ' Throughout a period 
fruitful of able men and trying circumstances [he was regarded] 
as the most popular specimen in the British senate of political 
consistency, intrepidity, and honour.' 

Sheridan's portrait was painted more than once by Sir Joshua 
Reynolds. The finest example belonged to H. N. Pym., esq., of 
Brasted ; another portrait by Sir Joshua was engraved by W. Read. 
Both these are reproduced in Mr. Rae's 'Biography,' together 
with a pencil sketch attributed to the same artist. The portrait 
by John Russell, R.A., is at the National Portrait Gallery, and 
a drawing of Sheridan in old age was engraved by the artist George 
Clint. John Hoppner painted the second Mrs. Sheridan with her 
infant son Charles. 

A collected edition of Sheridan's plays appeared at Dublin in 
1792-3, and in London 1794. Of many later editions, one was 



THE LIFE OF RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN 487 

edited by Moore in two volumes (1821), and to another (1840) 
Leigh Hunt contributed a biographical notice. Sheridan's speeches 
were edited 'by a constitutional friend' in 1798 (5 vols.), and with 
a life in 1816 (5 vols. ; 2nd edit. 1842, 3 vols.). His speeches in the 
trial of Warren Hastings, reprinted from the verbatim shorthand 
report of the proceedings, were edited by E. A. Bond, London, 
1859-61. 

Sheridan's only son, Thomas Sheridan (i 775-181 7), usually 
called Tom, was born on 17 March 1775, and died, as colonial 
treasurer, at the Cape of Good Hope, on 12 Sept. 181 7. He was 
very accomplished and a skilful versifier; a poem on the loss of 
the Saldanha was printed and praised. He entered the army and 
was for a time aide-de-camp to Lord Moira. In November 1805 
he married, with his father's approval, Caroline Henrietta Callan- 
der, by whom he had four sons and three daughters. His wife is 
separately noticed. The eldest son, Richard Brinsley Sheridan 
{d. 1888), married in 1835 Marcia Maria, only surviving child 
and heiress of Lieut. -general Sir Colquhoun Grant [q.v.] of Framp- 
ton Court, Dorset, and sat in parliament as member for Shaftes- 
bury from 1845 to 1852, and for Dorchester from 1852 to 1868. 
His son, Algernon Thomas Brinsley Sheridan of Frampton Court, 
owns many of his great-grandfather's papers. 

Tom Sheridan's three daughters were noted for their great 
beauty and talent. All were married: the eldest became Lady 
Dufferin, and afterwards Countess of Gifford [see Sheridan, 
Helen Selina]; the second became the Honourable Caroline 
Norton [q. v.], and afterwards Lady Stirling-Maxwell of Keir; 
and the youngest became Lady Seymour, and afterwards Duchess 
of Somerset [see Seymour, Edward Adolphus]. 



THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB 

ALFRED AINGER 
[From the Dictionary of National Biography.] 

Lamb, Charles (i 775-1834), essayist and humourist, was born 
on 10 Feb. 1775 in Crown Office Row in the Temple, London. 
His father, John Lamb, who is described under the name of Lovel 



488 ALFRED AINGER 

in Charles Lamb's essay ^The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple,' 
was the son of poor parents in Lincolnshire, and had come up 
as a boy to London and entered domestic service. He ultimately 
became clerk and servant to Samuel Salt, a bencher of the Inner 
Temple, and continued to fill that position until Salt's death in 
1792. He married Elizabeth Field, whose mother was for more 
than fifty years housekeeper at Blakesware in Hertfordshire, a few 
miles from Ware, a dower-house of the Plumers, a well-known 
county family. This ]\iary Field, Charles Lamb's grandmother, 
played an important part in the early development of his affec- 
tions, and is a familiar presence in some of the most character- 
istic and pathetic of his writings. 

To John and Elizabeth Lamb, in Crown Office Row, were 
born a family of seven children, of whom only three survived 
their infancy. The eldest of these three was John Lamb, born 
in 1763; the second Mary Ann, better known as Mary, born in 
1764; and the third Charles, baptised 10 March 1775 'by the 
Rev. Mr. Jeffs.' The baptisms of the entire family duly appear 
in the registers of the Temple Church, and were first printed by 
Mr. Charles Kent in his 'Centenary Edition of Lamb's Works' 
in 1875. 

The block of buildings in which Samuel Salt occupied one 
or more sets of chambers, and in which ihe Lamb family were 
born and reared, is at the eastern end of Crown Office Row, and 
though considerably modified since in its interior arrangements, 
still bears upon its outer wall the date 1737. 

Charles Lamb received his earliest education at a humble 
day-school kept by a Mr. William Bird in a court leading out of 
Fetter Lane (see Lamb's paper, 'Captain Starkey,' in Hone's 
Every-day Book, 21 July 1826). It was a school for both boys 
and girls, and Mary Lamb also attended it. At the age of seven 
Charles obtained a nomination to Christ's Hospital (the 'Blue 
Coat School'), through the influence of his father's employer, 
and within its venerable walls he passed the next seven years of 
his life, his holidays being spent with his parents in the Temple 
or with his grandmother, Mrs. Field, in Hertfordshire. 

What Charles Lamb learned at Christ's Hospital, what friend- 
ships he formed, and what merits and demerits he detected in the 



THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB 489 

arrangements, manners, and customs of the school, are all familiar 
to us from the two remarkable essays he has left us, ' On Christ's 
Hospital, and the Character of the Christ's Hospital Boys,' 
published in the 'Gentleman's Magazine' in 1813, and the later 
essay 'Christ's Hospital Five-and-thirty Years Ago,' one of the 
Elia series, in the 'London Magazine' of November 1820. On 
the whole he seems to have been happy in the school, and to have 
acquired considerable skill in its special studies, notably in Latin, 
which he was fond of reading, and in a rough-and-ready way 
writing, to the end of his life. At the time of quitting the school' 
he had not attained the highest position, that of 'Grecian,' but 
the nearest in rank to it, that of deputy Grecian. Perhaps the 
school authorities were not careful to promote him to the superior 
rank, seeing that he was not to proceed to the university. As a 
Grecian Lamb would have been entitled to an exhibition, but it 
was understood that the privilege was intended for those who were 
to enter holy orders, and a fatal impediment of speech — an in- 
surmountable and painful stutter — made that profession im- 
possible for him even if his gifts and inclinations had pointed that 
way. He left Christ's Hospital in November 1789, carrying with 
him, among other precious possessions, the friendship of Samuel 
Taylor Coleridge, a friendship destined to endure, and to be the 
main living influence upon his mind and character till the latest 
year of his life. Coleridge was two years Lamb's senior, and re- 
mained at the school till 1792, when he went to Cambridge. 

At the date of Lamb's leaving school his elder brother John was 
a clerk in the South Sea House, and a humh)ler post in the same 
office was soon found for Charles through the good offices of 
Samuel Salt, who was a deputy-governor of the company. But 
early in 1792 he was appointed to a clerkship in the accountant's 
office of the India House, and remained a member of the staff 
for the next thirty years. The court minutes of the old India 
House record that on 5 April 1792 'William Savory, Charles 
Lamb, and Hutcher Trower' were appointed clerks in the ac- 
countant's office on the usual terms. Another entry of three 
weeks later tells that the sureties required by the office were in 
Lamb's case Peter Peirson, esq., of the Inner Temple, and John 
Lamb 'of the Inner Temple, gentleman.' The name of Peter 



490 ALFRED AINGER 

Peirson recalls one of the most touching passages in the essay on 
the 'Old Benchers.' 

Samuel Salt died in this same year, leaving various legacies 
and other benefactions to his faithful clerk and housekeeper. 
The Lamb family had accordingly to leave the Temple, and there 
is no record of their place of residence until 1796, when we hear 
of them as lodging in Little Queen Street, Holborn. The family 
were poor, Charles's salary, and what his sister could earn by 
needlework, in addition to the interest on Salt's legacies, forming 
their sole means of subsistence, for John Lamb the younger, a 
fairly prosperous gentleman, was living an independent life 
elsewhere. John Lamb the elder was old and sinking into dotage. 
The mother was an invalid, with apparently a strain of insanity. 
Mary Lamb was overworked, and the continued strain and anx- 
iety began to tell upon her mind. On 22 Sept. 1796 a terrible 
blow fell upon the family. Mary Lamb, irritated with a little 
apprentice-girl who was working in the family sitting-room, 
snatched a knife from the table, pursued the child round the room, 
and finally stabbed her mother, who had interposed in the girl's 
behalf. The wound was instantly fatal, Charles being at hand 
only in time to wrest the knife from his sister and prevent further 
mischief. An inquest was held and a verdict found of temporary 
insanity. Mary Lamb would have been in the ordinary course trans- 
ferred to a public lunatic asylum, but interest was made with the 
authorities, and she was given into the custody of her brother, then 
only just of age, who undertook to be her guardian, an office which 
he discharged under the gravest difficulties and discouragements 
for the remainder of his life. Mrs. Lamb was buried in the grave- 
yard of St. Andrew's, Holborn, on 26 Sept. 1796, and Charles 
Lamb, with his imbecile father and an old Aunt Hetty, who formed 
one of the household, left Little Queen Street. (The house no 
longer stands, having been removed with others to make room for 
a church, which now stands on its site.) The family removed 
to 45 Chapel Street, Pentonville, with the exception of Mary, 
who was placed under suitable care at Hackney, where Charles 
could frequently visit her. In February 1797 old Aunt Hetty 
died, and Charles was left as the solitary guardian of his father 
until the latter's death in 1799. 



THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB 49 1 

The letters of Charles Lamb, through which his life may be 
henceforth studied, open with a correspondence with Coleridge, 
beginning in May 1796. The earliest of these letters records how 
Charles Lamb himself had been for six weeks in the winter of 
1795-6 in an asylum for some form of mental derangement, 
which, however, seems never to have recurred. It is likely that this 
tendency was inherited from the mother, and that moreover the 
immediate cause, in this case, may have been a love disappoint- 
ment. This at least is certain, that already Charles Lamb had 
lost his heart to a girl living not far from Blakesware, his grand- 
mother's home in Hertfordshire. The earliest intimation of the 
fact is afforded by the existence of two sonnets which Lamb sub- 
mits to Coleridge in 1796 as having been written by him in the 
summer of 1795 (see Lamb's Letters, i. 4). Both poems refer to 
Hertfordshire, and the second distinctly reveals an attachment to 
a 'gentle maid' named Anna, who had lived in a 'cottage,' 
and with whom 'in happier days' he had held free converse, 
days which, however, 'ne'er must come again.' At that early 
date, therefore, it is clear that the course of love had not run 
smooth, and it is reasonable to connect Lamb's mental break- 
down in the following winter with this cause. A year later, in 
writing to Coleridge after his mother's death, he speaks of his 
attachment as a folly that has left him for ever. All that is cer- 
tain of this episode in Lamb's life is that the girl's name was Ann 
Simmons, that she lived with her mother in a cottage called Blen- 
heims, within a mile of Blakesware House, and that she ultimately 
married a Mr. Bartram, a silversmith, of Princes Street, Leicester 
Square (she is mentioned under that name in the essay 'Dream 
Children'). Thus far all is certain. The whole pedigree of 
the Simmons family is in the present writer's possession, but an 
old inhabitant of Widford (the village adjoining Blakesware), and 
intimate friend of the Lambs, from whom he obtained it, had 
never heard of the circumstances attending Lamb's unsuccessful 
wooing. 

In the spring of 1796 Coleridge made his earliest appearance as 
a poet in a small volume published by Cottle of Bristol, 'Poems 
on Various Subjects, by S. T. Coleridge, late of Jesus College, 
Cambridge,' and among these were four sonnets by Lamb. 'The 



492 



ALFRED AINGER 



effusions signed C. L. were written by Mr. Charles Lamb of the 
India House. Independently of the signature, their superior 
merit would have sufficiently distinguished them.' Two of these 
sonnets refer also to Anna with the fair hair and the blue eyes. 
This was Lamb's first appearance in print. The sonnets are 
chiefly remarkable as reflecting the diction and the graceful 
melancholy of WiUiam Lisle Bowles [q. v.], whose sonnets had in 
a singular degree influenced and inspired both Lamb and Coleridge 
while they were stiU at Christ's Hospital. A year later, in 1797, 
Coleridge produced a second edition of his poems, 'To which 
are now added Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd' 
(i775~i^39) h- '^•l- Among these were included the 'Anna' 
sonnets, and the fines entitled 'The Grandame,' written on his 
grandmother, Mrs. Field, who had died at Blakesware in 1792. 
(These latter had already appeared in print, in a handsome quarto, 
with certain others of Charles Lloyd's.) 

In the summer of 1797 Lamb devoted his short holiday (only 
one week) to a visit to Coleridge at Nether Stowey, where he made 
the acquaintance of Thomas Poole [q. v.], and met Wordsworth 
and others (see Mrs. Sandford, Thomas Poole and his Friends; 
and Lamb's Letters, i. 79). The following year, 1798, saw the 
publication of a thin volume, 'Blank Verse, by Charles Lamb 
and Charles Lloyd,' containing the touching verses on the 'Old 
Familiar Faces.' Later appeared Lamb's prose romance, 'A 
Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret,' a story of 
sentiment written under the influence of Mackenzie, and having 
the scene laid in Lamb's favourite village of Widford in Hertford- 
shire. During this year Cottle of Bristol had a portrait taken of 
Lamb by Hancock, an engraving of which appeared many years 
later in Cottle's 'Recollections of Coleridge.' This is the earliest 
portrait of Lamb we possess. In November 1798 Coleridge, 
with Wordsworth and his sister, left England for Germany, and 
for the next eighteen months Lamb was thrown for literary sym- 
pathy upon other friends, notably on Southey, with whom he 
began a frequent correspondence. In these letters Lamb's in- 
dividuality of style and humour became first markedly apparent. 

In the spring of 1799 Lamb's father died, and Mary Lamb 
returned to live with her brother, from whom she was never again 



THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB 493 

parted, except during occasional returns of her malady. But 
rumours of this malady followed them wherever they went. They 
had notice to quit their rooms in Pentonville in the spring of 1799, 
and they were accepted as tenants for a while by Lamb's old 
school-fellow, John Mathew Gutch [q. v.], then a law-stationer 
in Southampton Buildings, Holborn. Here they remained for 
nine months, but the old difficulties arose, and the brother and 
sister were again homeless. Lamb then turned to the familiar 
precincts of the Temple, and took rooms at the top of King's 
Bench Walk (Mitre Court Buildings), where he remained with 
his sister for nearly nine years. They then removed to Inner 
Temple Lane for a period of another nine years. 

Lamb's letters to Thomas Manning [q. v.], the mathematician 
and orientalist, and to Coleridge on his return from Germany, 
begin at the date of his settling in the Temple, and continue the 
story of his life. Manning's acquaintance he had made at Cam- 
bridge while visiting Charles Lloyd. Lamb now began to add to 
his scanty income by writing for the newspapers (see his Elia 
essay, Newspapers Thirty-five Years Ago). He contributed for 
some three years facetious paragraphs and epigrams to the ' Morn- 
ing Post,' 'Morning Chronicle,' and the 'Albion.' In 1802 
he published his 'John Woodvil,' a blank-verse play of the 
Restoration period, but showing markedly the influence of Mas- 
singer and Beaumont and Fletcher, full of felicitous lines, but crude 
and undramatic. It was reviewed in the 'Edinburgh Review,' 
April 1803, not unfairly, but ignorantly. The Elizabethan drama- 
tists were still sealed books save to the antiquary and the 
specialist. Meantime Charles and Mary Lamb were struggling 
with poverty, and with worse enemies. Lamb's journalistic and 
literary associates made demands on his hospitality, and good 
company brought its temptations. In 1804 Mary Lamb writes 
that they are 'very poor,' and that Charles is trying in various 
ways to earn money. He was still dreaming of possible dramatic 
successes, but these were not to be. In 1803 he sends Manning his 
well-known verses on Hester Savory, a young quakeress with 
whom he had fallen in love, though without her knowledge, when 
he lived (i 797-1 800) at Pentonville, and who had recently died a 
few months after her marriage. In September 1805 he is still 



494 



ALFRED AINGER 



thinking of dramatic work, and has a farce in prospect. The 
project took shape in the two-act farce, 'Mr. H.,' accepted by 
the proprietors of Drury Lane, and produced on lo Dec. The 
secret of Mr. H's real name (Hogsflesh) seemed trivial and vulgar 
to the audience, and in spite of Elliston's best efforts, the farce was 
hopelessly damned. Lamb was himself present, and next day re- 
corded the failure by letter to several of his friends. He now 
turned to a wider field of work in connection with the drama. He 
made Hazlitt's acquaintance in 1805, and Hazlitt introduced him 
to William Godwin, who had turned children's publisher. For 
Godwin Lamb and his sister agreed to write the 'Tales from 
Shakespeare,' published in January 1807, a second edition fol- 
lowing in the next year. Lamb did the tragedies and Mary the 
comedies. This was Lamb's first success, and first brought him 
into serious notice. It was followed by a child's version of the 
adventures of Ulysses, made from Chapman's translation of the 
'Odyssey,' for Lamb's knowledge of Greek was moderate. 
This appeared in 1808. A much more important work was at 
hand. The publishing house of Longmans commissioned him 
to edit selections from the Elizabethan dramatists. This also 
appeared in 1808, under the title of 'Specimens of English Dra- 
matic Poets contemporary with Shakespeare.' Lamb was at once 
recognised as a critic of the highest order, and of a kind as yet 
unknown to English literature, and from this time forward his 
position as a prose writer of marked originality was secure among 
the more thoughtful of his contemporaries, though it was not till 
some ten years later that he reached the general public. Between 
1808 and 1818 his chief critical productions were the two noble 
essays on Hogarth and on the tragedies of Shakespeare, published 
in Leigh Hunt's 'Reflector' in 181 1, while the 'Recollections 
of Christ's Hospital,' in the 'Gentleman's Magazine' of 1813, 
and the 'Confessions of a Drunkard,' contributed to his friend 
Basil Montagu's 'Some Enquiries into the Effects of Fermented 
Liquors' in 1814, were the first specimens of the miscellaneous 
essay in the vein he was to work later, with such success, in the 
'Essays of Elia.' Meantime he was strengthening his position 
and widening his interests by new and stimulating friendships, 
Talf ourd, Proctor, Crabb Robinson, Haydon, and others appearing 



THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB 495 

among his correspondence, while the old relations with the Words- 
worths and Coleridge remained among the best influences of his 
life. 

In the autumn of 181 7 Lamb and his sister left the Temple for 
lodgings in Great Russell Street, Covent Garden. Soon after 
a young bookseller, Charles Oilier, induced him to publish a 
collection of his miscellaneous writings in verse and prose, includ- 
ing some, like 'John Woodvil' and 'Rosamund Gray,' long out 
of print. These appeared in two volumes, dedicated to Coleridge, 
in 18 18, and at once obtained for Lamb a wider recognition. A 
more important result was to follow. The 'London Magazine' 
made its first appearance in January 1820. Hazlitt, who was 
on the staff, introduced Lamb to the editor, John Scott, and he 
was invited to contribute occasional essays. The first of these, 
'Recollections of the South Sea House,' appeared in August 1820. 
In writing the essay. Lamb remembered an obscure clerk in that 
office during his own short connection with it as a boy, of the name 
of Elia, and as a joke appended that name to the essay. In subse- 
quent essays he continued the same signature, which became 
inseparably connected with the series (see letter of Lamb to his 
publisher, John Taylor, in July 182 1). 'Call him EUia,' writes 
Lamb, and it seems probable that the name was really thus spelled. 
Between August 1820 and December 1822 Lamb contributed 
five-and-twenty essays, thus signed, at the rate of about one a 
month. These were reprinted in a single volume in 1823: 'Elia 
— Essays that have appeared under that signature in the "Lon- 
don Magazine." ' 

Meantime, Lamb's elder brother John had died (November 
182 1), and to the increasing loneliness of his existence we owe 
the beautiful essay, 'Dream Children.' In 1822 Charles and 
his sister for the first time went abroad, paying a short visit to 
their friend James Kenney [q. v.] the dramatist, who lived at Ver- 
sailles, and whose son, born in 1823, was christened Charles 
Lamb Kenney [q. v.]. During his absence from England Mary 
Lamb had one of her now more frequent attacks of mental de- 
rangement. The next year brought a new anxiety into Lamb's 
life, in the form of a criticism from the pen of an old friend on 
the 'Elia' volume of 1823. Sou they, in reviewing a work by 



496 ALFRED ATNGER 

Gregoire upon deism in France, drew a moral from the hopeless 
tone of one of Lamb's essays — that on 'Witches and other Night 
Fears' — adding that the essays as a whole lacked a 'sound re- 
ligious feeling.' The charge pained Lamb keenly, both as com- 
ing from an old friend and as touching a vein of real sorrow and 
anxiety in his mental history. He replied to the charge in the 
well-known 'Letter of Elia to Robert Southey, Esq.,' in the 'Lon- 
don Magazine' for October 1823. Southey, in reply, wrote a 
loving and generous letter of explanation to Lamb, and the breach 
between the old friends was at once healed. The same year that 
brought Lamb this distress was to bring compensation in a new 
interest added to his life. He and his sister were in the habit 
of spending their autumn holiday in Cambridge, where they had 
a friend, Mrs. Paris, sister of Lamb's old friend, William Ayrton. 
Here the Lambs met a little orphan girl, Emma Isola, daughter 
of Charles Isola, one of the esquire bedells of the university. They 
invited her to spend subsequent holidays with them, and finally 
adopted her. During the remaining ten years of Lamb's life 
the companionship of the young girl supplied the truest solace and 
relief amid the deepening anxieties of the home life. Lamb and 
his sister devoted themselves to her education, and though in 
after years she left them at times to become herself a teacher of 
others, their house was her home until her marriage with Edward 
Moxon, the publisher, in 1833. Mrs. Moxon died in March 1891. 
In August 1823 the Lambs left their rooms in Russell Street, 
Covent Garden, 'over the Brazier's,' and took a cottage in 
Colebrooke Row, Islington, the New River flowing at the foot 
of their garden. Lamb describes the house in a letter of 2 Sept. 
to Bernard Barton [q. v.], the quaker poet of Woodbridge, who 
was one of Lamb's later friends, acquired through the 'London 
Magazine.' To him many of Lamb's happiest letters are ad- 
dressed. Meantime Lamb was writing more 'Elia' essays, 
though with weakening health and increasing restlessness. Al- 
ready he was considering the chances of retirement from the India 
House, and a severe illness in the winter of 1824-25 brought 
the matter to an issue. His doctors urgently supported his appli- 
cation to the directors, and the happy result was made known to 
him in March 1825, when it was announced that a retiring pen- 



THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB 



497 



sion would be awarded him, consisting of three-fourths of his 
salary, with a slight deduction to insure an allowance for his sister 
in the event of her surviving. 'After thirty-three years' slavery,' 
he wrote to Wordsworth, 'here am I a freed man, with 441/. a 
year for the remainder of my life.' The first use that Lamb made 
of his freedom was to pay visits of varying length in the country, 
always in the direction of his favourite Hertfordshire. The brother 
and sister took lodgings occasionally at the Chace, Enfield, and 
after two years became sole tenants of the little house. Meantime 
the trials of having nothing to do became very real to them both. 
Lamb was an excellent walker, and in the summer months he 
found great pleasure in exploring the scenery of Hertfordshire, 
with the comforting remembrance that he was still in easy touch 
with London and friends. But old friends were dying, and Lamb's 
loyal nature found little compensation in the cultivation of new 
ones. That devoted friend of his childhood, Mr. Randal Norris, 
sub-treasurer of the Inner Temple, died in January 1827, and is 
the subject of a pathetic letter to Crabb Robinson — 'To the last 
he called me Charley. I have none to call me Charley now.' 
Randal Norris left two daughters who set up a school at Widford, 
to which village their mother had belonged. The younger, Mrs. 
Arthur Tween, who was well known to the present writer, died at 
an advanced age at Widford in July 189 1 . During the few remain- 
ing years of Lamb's life it was a favourite excursion for him and 
Miss Isola to walk over to Widford and beg a half -holiday for the 
girls and tell them stories. 

In 1828 Lamb obtained some literary work of a kind thoroughly 
congenial. He wished to assist Hone, then producing his 'Table 
Book,' and undertook to make extracts (after the model of his 
'Dramatic Specimens' of 1808) from the Garrick plays in the 
British Museum. He had written also for the 'New Monthly 
Magazine,' in 1826, his essays called 'Popular Fallacies.' He 
wrote also occasional verse, and at times in his happiest and most 
characteristic vein, such as the lines ' On an Infant dying as soon 
as born,' written on the death of Thomas Hood's first child, in 
1828. Acrostics also, and other such trifles, and album verses, 
became increasingly in request among his young lady friends. 
And in 1830, to help his friend Moxon, then newly starting as 

2K 



498 



ALFRED AINGER 



publisher, he made a collection of these, under the title of 'Album 
Verses, with a few others.' In the summer of 1829 the brother 
^nd sister had again to change their residence. Mary's health 
was steadily weakening, her attacks and periods of absence from 
home became longer, and the cares of housekeeping proved in- 
tolerable. They moved, accordingly, to the adjoining house in 
Enfield Chace, and boarded with a retired tradesman and his wife, 
a Mr. and Mrs. Westwood. The immediate effects were satis- 
factory, and for a while Mary Lamb seemed to improve in health 
and spirits. But Charles meantime became less at ease in country 
life. The next year brought him new distractions. Emma Isola, 
for whom the Lambs had found a situation as governess in Suffolk, 
had a serious illness, during which Lamb visited her, and finally 
brought her home, convalescent, to Enfield. In 1833 the Lambs 
moved once more, and for the last time. Mary's improvement 
in health had been merely temporary, and it became necessary 
for her to be under more skilful and constant nursing. During 
previous illnesses she had been placed under the care of a Mr. and 
Mrs. Walden, at Bay Cottage, Edmonton (the parish adjoining 
Enfield), and now the brother and sister moved together, to spend, 
as it proved, the last two years of their united lives under the 
Waldens' roof. 

In the same year Emma Isola became engaged to Edward 
Moxon, and the marriage took place in July 1833, leaving Charles 
Lamb yet more lonely, and without social resource. The 'Last 
Essays of Elia,' mainly from the 'London Magazine,' were pub- 
lished this year by Moxon, and but for an occasional copy of verses 
for a friend's album. Lamb's literary career was closed. In July 
1834 Coleridge died, and with this event Lamb's last surviving 
friend passed from him. He himself, more and more lonely and 
forlorn, bore his heavy burden five months longer. One day 
in December, while walking on the London Road, he stumbled 
and fell, slightly wounding his face. A few days later erysipelas 
supervened, and he had no strength left to battle with the disease. 
He passed away without pain, on 27 Dec. 1834, and was buried 
in Edmonton churchyard. His sister survived him nearly thirteen 
years, dying at Alpha Road, St. John's Wood, on 20 May 1847; 
she was buried beside her brother. Charles left her his savings. 



THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB 



499 



amounting to about 2,000/., and she was also entitled to the pen- 
sion reserved to her by the terms of Lamb's retirement from the 
India House. 

No figure in literature is better known to us than Lamb. His 
writings, prose and verse, are full of personal revelations. We 
possess a body of his correspondence, also of the most confidential 
kind, and his friends have left descriptions of him from almost 
every point of view. He numbered among his earliest friends 
Coleridge, Southey, Wordsworth, and among his later Proctor, 
Talfourd, Hood, Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt, Crabb Robinson, while 
many of his most characteristic letters were written to men who 
have attained general fame mainly through Lamb's friendship. 
Notable among these are Thomas Manning and Bernard Barton. 
No man was ever more loved by a wide and varied class of friends. 
His lifelong devotion to his sister, for whose sake he abjured all 
thoughts of marriage; the unique attachment between the pair; 
Lamb's unfailing loyalty to his friends, who often levied heavy 
taxes on his purse and leisure; his very eccentricities and petu- 
lances, including his one serious frailty — a too careless indul- 
gence in strong drinks — excited a profound pity in those who 
knew the unceasing domestic difficulties which he surmounted 
so bravely for eight-and-thirty years. It is likely that the necessity 
of protecting and succouring his sister acted as a strong power 
over his will, and helped to preserve his sanity during the hardship 
of the years that followed. But one result of the taint of insan- 
ity inherited from his mother was that a very small amount of 
alcohol was enough at any time to throw his mind off its balance. 
He was afflicted moreover, all his life with a bad stutter, and the 
eagerness to forget the impediment, which put him at a disadvan- 
tage in all conversations, probably further encouraged the habit. 
The infirmity, which has been in turn denied and exaggerated by 
friends and enemies, never interfered with the regular performance 
of his official duties, or with his domestic responsibilities. 

The extant portraits of Lamb are the following: i. By Robert 
Hancock of Bristol, 1798, drawn for Joseph Cottle; in the Na- 
tional Portrait Gallery. 2. By Wm. Hazlitt, 1805, in a fancy 
dress; in the National Portrait Gallery. 3. By G. F. Joseph, 
A.R.A., 1819; water-colour drawing made to illustrate a copy of 



500 



ALFRED AINGER 



'English Bards and Scotch Reviewers;' in the British Museum. 
4. Etching on copper by Brook Pulham, a friend of Lamb's in 

tb^^ndia House, 1825. 5. By Henry Meyer, 1826; in the India 

Office : of two small replicas one is in the National Portrait Gal- 
lery and the other belongs to Sir Charles Dilke, bart., M.P. 6. By 
T. Wageman, 1824 or 1825; engraved in Talfourd's 'Letters 
of Charles Lamb,' 1837; in America. 7. Charles Lamb and his 
sister together, by F. S. Cary, 1834; in the National Portrait 
Gallery. 8. By Maclise, sketch in 'Eraser's Magazine,' 1835 
(cf. Lucas's Life, ii. App. i.). 

Lamb's writings published in book form are: i. 'Poems on 
Various Subjects, by S. T. Coleridge, late of Jesus College, Cam- 
bridge,' 1796, contains four sonnets by Lamb signed 'C. L.,' 
referred to by Coleridge in his preface as by ' Mr. Charles Lamb 
of the India House.' 2. 'Poems by S. T. Coleridge, 2nd edit., to 
which are now added Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd,' 

1797. 3. 'Blank Verse by Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb,' 

1798. 4. 'A Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret, by 
Charles Lamb,' 1798. 5. 'John Woodvil, a Tragedy, by Charles 
Lamb,' &c., 1802. 6. 'Mrs. Leicester's School,' &c., 1807, 
by Charles and Mary Lamb, Charles contributing three of the 
stories, 'The Witch Aunt,' 'First going to Church,' and the 
'Sea Voyage.' 7. 'Tales from Shakespeare, &c., by Charles 
Lamb,' 1807. The bulk of the tales were written by Mary Lamb, 
Charles contributing the tragedies. 8. 'The Adventures of Ulys- 
ses, by Charles Lamb,' 1808. 9. 'Specimens of English Dra- 
matic Poets, with Notes by Charles Lamb,' 1808. 10. 'Poetry 
for Children, entirely original, by the author of "Mrs. Leicester's 
School," ' anonymous, by Charles and Mary Lamb. The respec- 
tive shares of the two writers were not indicated. A few of 
Lamb's verses were reprinted by him in his 'Collected Works' 
in 1818. II. 'Prince Dorus,' a poetical version of an ancient 
tale, 181 1. 12. 'The Works of Charles Lamb,' in 2 vols. Lon- 
don, 1818. 13. 'Elia — Essays which have appeared under 
that signature in the "London Magazine,"' 1823. 14. 'Album 
Verses, with a few others,' by Charles Lamb, 1830. 15. 'Satan 
in Search of a Wife,' 1831. 16. 'The Last Essays of Elia,' 1833. 
In this list are not included Lamb's occasional contributions to 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 501 

periodical literature, such as albums and keepsakes, prologues, 
and epilogues to plays, and the like. Lamb's children's books 
(for Godwin) also include 'The King and Queen of Hearts' 
(slight anonymous verses to illustrations by Mulready), 1805 
(edited in facsimile by E. V. Lucas, 1902). It is improbable that 
Lamb was responsible for another anonymous volume in verse 
issued by Godwin about 181 1, 'Beauty and the Beast,' which 
was reprinted, with preface by Shepherd, 1886, and by Andrew 
Lang, 1887. 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 

SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 
[From the Dictionary of National Biography.] 

Byron, George Gordon, sixth lord (i 788-1 824), poet, de- 
scended from John, first Lord Byron, who was succeeded by his 
brother Richard (1605-1679). Richard's son, William {d. 1695), 
became third lord, and wrote some bad verses. By his wife, 
Elizabeth, daughter of Viscount Chaworth, he was father of 
William, fourth lord (1669-1736), gentleman of the bedchamber to 
Prince George of Denmark. The fourth lord was father, by his 
wife, Frances, daughter of Lord Berkeley of Stratton, of William, 
fifth lord, John, afterwards Admiral Byron, and Isabella, wife of 
the fourth and mother of the fifth earl of Carlisle. The fifth lord 
(17 2 2-1 798) quarrelled with his cousin Mr. Chaworth (great grand- 
son of Viscount Chaworth) at a club dinner of Nottinghamshire 
gentlemen, 26 Jan. 1765, and killed him after a confused scuffle 
in a room to which they had retired by themselves after dinner. 
Byron was convicted of manslaughter before the House of Lords, 
16 April 1765 {State Trials, xix. 11 75), and, though exempted from 
punishment by his privilege as a peer, became a marked man. 
He lived in seclusion at Newstead Abbey, ill-treated his wife, was 
known as the 'wicked lord,' encumbered his estates, and made a 
sale of his property at Rochdale, the disputed legality of which 
led to a prolonged lawsuit. His children and his only grandson 
(son of his son by the daughter of his brother, the admiral) died 



502 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

before him. Admiral Byron had two sons, John and George 
Anson (ancestor of the present peer), and three daughters, one of 
whom became wife of her cousin, son of the fifth lord ; another of 
Admiral Parker; the third of Colonel Leigh, by whom she was 
mother of another Colonel Leigh, who married his cousin, Augusta, 
daughter of John Byron, the admiral's eldest son. This John 
Byron (born 1756) was educated at Westminster, entered the 
guards, was known as 'mad Jack,' and was a handsome profligate. 
He seduced the Marchioness of Carmarthen, who became Baroness 
Conyers on the death of her father, fourth earl of Holderness. He 
married her (June 1779) after her divorce, and had by her in 1782 
a daughter, Augusta, married to Colonel Leigh in 1807. Lady 
Conyers's death in France, 26 Jan. 1784, deprived her husband of 
an income of 4,000/. a year. He soon afterwards met at Bath a 
Miss Catherine Gordon of Gicht, with a fortune of 23,000/., 
doubled by rumour. The pair were married at St. Michael's 
Church, Bath, 13 May 1785 (parish register). John Byron took 
his second wife to France, squandered most of her property, and 
returned to England, where their only child, George Gordon, 
was born in Holies Street, London, 22 Jan. 1788. John Hunter 
saw the boy when he was born, and prescribed for the infant's 
feet (Mrs. Byron's letters in Add. MS. 31037). A malformation 
was caused, as Byron afterwards said, by his mother's 'false 
delicacy.' Trelawny {Records, ii. 132) says that the tendo Achillis 
of each foot was so contracted that he could only walk on the balls 
of the toes, the right foot being most distorted and bent inwards. 
Injudicious treatment increased the mischief, and through life 
the poet could only hobble a few paces on foot, though he could at 
times succeed in concealing his infirmity. 

John Byron's creditors became pressing. The daughter, 
Augusta, was sent to her grandmother, the Dowager Countess 
Holderness. Mrs. Byron retired to Aberdeen, and lived upon 
150/. a year, the interest of 3,000/. in the hands of trustees, the sole 
remnant of her fortune. She took lodgings in Queen Street, 
Aberdeen, and was followed by her husband, who occupied sepa- 
rate lodgings and sometimes petted the child, who professed in later 
years to remember him perfectly (Medwin, p. 58). With money 
got from his wife or his sister, Mrs. Leigh, he escaped to France 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 



503 



in January 1791, and died at Valenciennes, 2 Aug. 1791, possibly 
by his own hand (Jeaffreson, i. 48; Harness, p. ^;^; Letter 
No. 460 in Moore's Life of Byron implicitly denies suicide). 
Mrs. Byron's income, reduced to 135/. by debts for furniture and 
by helping her husband, was raised to 190/. on the death of her 
grandmother, and she lived within her means. Capricious and 
passionate by nature, she treated her child with alternate excesses 
of violence and tenderness. Scott (Moore, ch. xxiv.) says that 
in 1784 she was seized with an hysterical fit during Mrs. Siddons's 
performance in Southern's 'Fatal Marriage,' and carried out 
screaming, 'Oh, my Biron, my Biron' (the name of a character 
in the play) . She was short and fat, and would chase her mocking 
child round the room in impotent fury. To the frank remark of a 
schoolfellow, 'Your mother is a fool,' he replied, 'I know it.' 
Another phrase is said to have been the germ of the ' Deformed 
Transformed.' His mother reviling him as a 'lame beast,' he re- 
plied, ' I was born so, mother.' The child was passionately fond 
of his nurse. May Gray, to whom at the final parting he gave a 
watch and his miniature — afterwards in the possession of Dr. 
Ewing of Aberdeen — and by whose teaching he acquired a 
familiarity with the Bible, preserved through life by a very reten- 
tive memory. At first he went to school to one 'Bodsy Bowers,' 
and afterwards to a clergyman named Ross. The son of his 
shoemaker, Paterson, taught him some Latin, and he was at the 
grammar school from 1794 to 1798 (Bain, Life of ArnoU, in the 
papers of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society, gives his places in 
the school) . He was regarded as warm-hearted, pugnacious, and 
idle. Visits to his mother's relations and an excursion to Ballater 
for change of air in 1796 varied his schooldays. In a note to the 
' Island' (1813) he dates his love of mountainous scenery from this 
period ; and in a note to ' Don Juan' (canto x. stanza 18) he recalls 
the delicious horror with which he leaned over the bridge of 
Balgounie, destined in an old rhyme to fall with ' a wife's ae son and 
a mare's ae foal.' An infantile passion for a cousin, Mary Duff, 
in his eighth year was so intense that he was nearly thrown into 
convulsions by hearing, when he was sixteen, of her marriage to 
Mr. Robert Cockburn (a well-known wine merchant, brother 
of Lord Cockburn). She died 10 March 1858 {Notes and 



504 



SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 



Queries, 2nd series, iii. 231; she is described in Mr. Ruskin's 
'Praeterita'). 

In 1794, by the death of the fifth Lord Byron's grandson at the 
siege of Calvi in Corsica, Byron became heir to the peerage. A 
Mr. Ferguson suggested to Mrs. Byron that an application to the 
civil list for a pension might be successful if sanctioned by the 
actual peer (Letters in Morrison MSS.). The grand-uncle would 
not help the appeal, but after his death (19 May 1798) a pension 
of 300/. was given to the new peer's mother (warrant dated 2 Oct. 
1799). In the autumn Mrs. Byron with her boy and May Gray 
left Aberdeen for Newstead. The house was ruinous. The 
Rochdale property was only recoverable by a lawsuit. The actual 
income of the Newstead estate was estimated at 1,100^. a year, 
which might be doubled when the leases fell in. Byron told Med- 
win (p. 40) that it was about 1,500/. a year. Byron was made a 
ward in chancery, and Lord Carlisle, son of the old lord's sister, 
was appointed his guardian. 

Mrs. Byron settled at Nottingham, and sent the boy to be pre- 
pared for a public school by Mr. Rogers. He was tortured by the 
remedies applied to his feet by a quack named Lavender. His 
talent for satire was already shown in a lampoon on an old lady and 
in an exposure of Lavender's illiteracy. In 1799 he was taken 
to London by his mother, examined for his lameness by Dr. Baillie, 
and sent to Dr. Glennie's school at Dulwich, where the treatment 
prescribed by Baillie could be carried out. Glennie found him 
playful, amiable, and intelligent, ill-grounded in scholarship, but 
familiar with scripture, and a devourer of poetry. At Glennie's 
he read a pamphlet on the shipwreck of the Juno in 1795, which 
was afterwards worked up in 'Don Juan;' and here, about 1800, 
he wrote his first love poem, addressed to his cousin Margaret 
Parker. Byron speaks of her transparent and evanescent beauty, 
and says that his passion had its ' usual effects ' of preventing sleep 
and appetite. She died of consumption a year or two later. 
Meanwhile Mrs. Byron's tempers had become insupportable to 
Glennie, whose discipline was spoilt by her meddling, and to Lord 
Carlisle, who ceased to see her. Her importunity prevailed upon 
the guardian to send the boy to Harrow, where (in the summer of 
1 801) he became a pupil of the Rev. Joseph Drury. 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 505 

Drury obtained the respect and affection of his pupil. A note 
to ' Childe Harold ' (canto i v.) , upon a passage in which he describes 
his repugnance to the 'daily drug' of classical lessons, expresses 
his enthusiastic regard for Drury, and proves that he had not 
profited by Drury's teaching. His notes in the books which he 
gave to the school library show that he never became a tolerable 
scholar. He was always 'idle, in mischief, or at play,' though 
reading voraciously by fits. He shone in declamation, and Drury 
tells how he quite unconsciously interpolated a vigorous passage 
into a prepared composition. Unpopular and unhappy at first, 
he hated Harrow (Moore, ch. iv.) till his last year and a half; 
but he became attached to it on rising to be a leader. Glennie 
had noticed that his deformity had increased his desire for athletic 
glory. His strength of arm made him formidable in spite of his 

lameness. He fought Lord Calthorpe for writing ' d d atheist ' 

under his name (Med win, p. 68). He was a cricketer {Notes 
and Queries, 6th ser. viii. 245), and the late Lord Stratford de Red- 
cliffe remembered seeing him playing in the match against Eton 
with another boy to run for him. Byron was one of the ringleaders 
in a childish revolt against the appointment of Dr. Butler (March 
1805) as Drury's successor, and in favour of Mark Drury. Byron 
said that he saved the hall from burning by showing to the boys 
the names of their ancestors on the walls (Med win, p. 68). He 
afterwards satirised Butler as 'Pomposus' in 'Hours of Idleness,' 
but had the sense to apologise before his first foreign tour. 

'My school friendships,' says Byron, 'were with me passions.' 
Byron remonstrates with a boyish correspondent for calling him 
'my dear' instead of 'my dearest Byron.' His most famous 
contemporary at Harrow was Sir Robert Peel, for whom he offered 
to take half the thrashing inflicted by a bully. He protected Har- 
ness, his junior by two years, who survived till 1869. His closest 
intimates were apparently Lords Clare and Dorset and John Wing- 
field. When he met Clare long afterwards in Italy, he was agi- 
tated to a painful degree, and says that he could never hear the 
name without a beating of the heart. He had been called at 
Glennie's 'the old English baron,' and some aristocratic vanity 
perhaps appears in his choice of intimates and dependents. 

His mother was at Bath in 1802 (where he appeared in Turkish 



5o6 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

costume at a masquerade) ; at Nottingham in 1803 ; and at South- 
well, in a house called Burgage Manor, in 1804. Byron visited 
Newstead in 1803, then occupied by Lord Grey de Ruthin, who set 
apart a room for his use. He was often at Annesley Hall, the seat 
of his distant cousins the Chaworths. Mary Anne Chaworth was 
fifth in descent from Viscount Chaworth, and her grandfather was 
brother to the William Chaworth killed by the fifth Lord Byron. 
A superstitious fancy (duly turned to account in the ' Siege of Cor- 
inth,' xxi.), that the family portraits would descend from their 
frames to haunt the duellist's heir, made him refuse to sleep there ; 
till a ' bogle ' seen on the road to Newstead — or some less fanciful 
motive — induced him to stay for the night. He had fallen des- 
perately in love with Mary Anne Chaworth, two years his senior, 
who naturally declined to take him seriously. A year later Miss 
Pigot describes him as a 'fat bashful boy.' In 1804 he found 
Miss Chaworth engaged to John Musters. The marriage took 
place in 1805. Moore gives a report, probably inaccurate (see 
Jeaffreson, i. 123), of Byron's agitation on hearing of the 
wedding. He dined with her and her husband in 1808, and was 
much affected by seeing her infant daughter. Poems addressed 
to her appeared in 'Hours of Idleness' and Hobhouse's 'Mis- 
cellany.' He told Medwin (p. 65) that he had found in her 'all 
that his youthful fancy could paint of beautiful.' Mrs. Musters's 
marriage was unhappy; she was separated from her husband; 
her mind became affected, and she died in 1832 from a shock caused 
by riots at Nottingham. This passion seems to have left the most 
permanent traces on Byron's life; though it was a year later (if 
his account is accurate) that the news of Mary Duff's marriage 
nearly caused convulsions. 

In October 1805 Byron entered Trinity College, Cambridge, 
as a nobleman. A youth of ' tumultuous passions ' (in the phrase of 
his college tutor), he was exposed to the temptations of his rank, 
yet hardly within the sphere of its legitimate ambition. He rode, 
shot with a pistol, and boxed. He made a friend of the famous 
pugilist, Jackson, paid for postchaises to bring 'dear Jack' to visit 
him at Brighton, invited him to Newstead, and gave him commis- 
sions about dogs and horses. He was greatest at swimming. 
The pool below the sluice at Grantchester is still called by his 




THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 507 

name. Leigh Hunt first saw him (Hunt, Byron, &c. p. i) swim- 
ming a match in the Thames under Jackson's supervision, and 
in August 1807 he boasts to Miss Pigot of a three miles swim 
through Blackfriars and Westminster bridges. He travelled to 
various resorts with a carriage, a pair of horses, a groom and valet, 
besides a bulldog and a Newfoundland. In 1806 his mother 
ended a quarrel by throwing the poker and tongs at his head. She 
followed him to his lodgings in London, whither he retreated, 
and there another engagement resulted in the defeat of the enemy 
— his mother. On a visit to Harrogate in the same summer with 
his friend Pigot he was shy, quiet, avoided drinking, and was polite 
to Professor Hailstone, of Trinity. On some of his rambles he 
was accompanied by a girl in boy's clothes, whom he introduced 
as his younger brother. He tells Miss Pigot that he has played 
hazard for two nights till four in the morning; and in a later 
diary (Moore, chap, viii.) says that he loved gambling, but left 
off in time, and played little after he was of age. It is not surpris- 
ing to find him confessing in 1808 (Letter 25) that he is 'cursedly 
dipped,' and will owe 9,000/. or 10,000/. on coming of age. The 
college authorities naturally looked askance at him; and Byron 
symbolised his opinion of dons by bringing up a bear to college, 
and declaring that the animal should sit for a fellowship. 

Byron formed friendships and had pursuits of a more intellectual 
kind. He seems to have resided at Cambridge for the Michael- 
mas term 1805, and the Lent and Easter terms 1806; he was then 
absent for nearly a year, and returned to keep (probably) the Easter 
term of 1807, the following October and Lent terms, and perhaps 
the Easter term of 1808, taking his M.A. degree on 4 July 1808 
(information kindly given by Cambridge authorities). In the first 
period of residence, though sulky and solitary, he became the ad- 
miring friend of W. J. Bankes, was intimate with Edward Noel 
Long, and protected a chorister named Eddlestone. His friend- 
ship with this youth, he tells Miss Pigot (July 1807), is to eclipse 
all the classical precedents, and Byron means to get a partnership 
for his friend, or to take him as a permanent companion. Eddie- 
stone died of consumption in 181 1, and Byron then reclaimed 
from Miss Pigot a cornelian, which he had originally received 
from Eddlestone, and handed on to her. References to this friend- 



5o8 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

ship are in the 'Hours of Idleness/ and probably in the ' Cornelian 
Heart' (dated March 1812). Long entered the army, and was 
drowned in a transport in 1809, to Byron's profound affliction. 
He became intimate with two fellows of King's — Henry Drury 
and Francis Hodgson, afterwards provost of Eton. Byron showed 
his friendship for Hodgson by a present of 1,000/. in 1813, when 
Hodgson was in embarrassment and Byron not over rich (Hodg- 
son, Memoirs, i. 268). In his later residence a closer 'coterie' 
was formed by Byron, Hobhouse, Davies, and C. S. Matthews 
(Letter 66). John Cam Hobhouse, afterwards Lord Broughton, 
was his friend through life. Scrope Berdmore Davies, a man of 
wit and taste, delighted Byron by his 'dashing vivacity,' and lent 
him 4,800/., the repayment of which was celebrated by a drinking 
bout at the Cocoa on 27 March 1814. Hodgson reports (i. 104) 
that when Byron exclaimed melodramatically 'I shall go mad,' 
Davies used to suggest 'silly' as a probable emendation. 
Matthews was regarded as the most promising of the friends. 
Byron described his audacity, his swimming and boxing, and 
conversational powers in a letter to Murray (20 Nov. 1820), and 
tells Dallas (Letter 61) that he was a 'most decided' and out- 
spoken 'atheist.' 

Among these friends Byron varied the pursuit of pleasure by 
literary efforts. He boasts in a juvenile letter (No. 20) that he 
has often been compared to ' the wicked ' Lord Lyttelton, and has 
already been held up as ' the votary of licentiousness and the dis- 
ciple of infidelity.' A list (dated 30 Nov. 1807) shows that he had 
read or looked through many historical books and novels^' by the 
thousand.' His memory was remarkable (see e.g. Gamba, p. 148; 
Lady Blessington, p. 134). Scott, however, found in 1815 that 
his reading did 'not appear to have been extensive, either in history 
or poetry ; ' and the list does not imply that he had strayed beyond 
the highways of literature. 

At Southwell, in September 1806, he took the principal part 
(Penruddock, an 'amiable misanthrope') in an amateur per- 
formance of Cumberland's 'Wheel of Fortune,' and 'spun a pro- 
logue' in a postchaise. About the same time he confessed to Miss 
Pigot, who had been reading Burns to him, that he too was a poet, 
and wrote down the lines 'In thee I fondly hoped to clasp.' In 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 



509 



November 1806 Ridge, a Newark bookseller, had privately printed 
for him a small volume of poems, entitled 'Fugitive Pieces.' His 
friend Mr. Becher, a Southwell clergyman [see Becher, John], 
remonstrated against the license of one poem. Byron immediately 
destroyed the whole impression (except one copy in Becher's 
hands and one sent to young Pigot, then studying medicine at 
Edinburgh). A hundred copies, omitting the offensive verses, 
and with some additions, under the title 'Poems on Various Occa- 
sions,' were distributed in January 1807. Favourable notices 
came to the author from Bankes, Henry Mackenzie ('The Man of 
Feeling'), and Lord Woodhouselee. In the summer of 1807 Byron 
published a collection called 'Hours of Idleness, a series of Poems, 
original and translated, by George Gordon, Lord Byron, a minor,' * 
from which twenty of the privately printed poems were omitted 
and others added. It was praised in the 'Critical Review' of 
September 1807, and abused in the first number of the 'Satirist.' 
A new edition, with some additions and without the prefaces, 
appeared in March 1808 (see account of these editions in appendix 
to English translation of Elze's Byron (1872), p. 446). In Janu- 
ary 1808 the famous criticism came out in the 'Edinburgh' (Byron 
speaks of this as about to appear in a letter (No. 24) dated 26 Feb. 
1808). The critique has been attributed both to Brougham and 
Jeffrey. Jeffrey seems to have denied the authorship (see Med- 
wiN, p. 174), and the ponderous legal facetiousness is certainly 
not unlike Brougham, whom Byron came to regard as the author 
(see Notes and Queries, 4th ser. vi. 368, 480). The severity was 
natural enough. Scott, indeed, says that he remonstrated with 
Jeffrey, thinking that the poems contained 'some passages of 
noble promise.' But the want of critical acumen is less obvious 
than the needless cruelty of the wound inflicted upon a boy's 
harmless vanity. Byron was deeply stung. He often boasted 
afterwards (e.g. Letter 420) that he instantly drank three bottles of 
claret and began a reply. He had already in his desk (Letter 18), 
on 26 Oct. 1807, 380 lines of his satire, besides 214 pages of a novel, 
560 lines in blank verse of a poem on Bosworth Field, and other 
pieces. He now carefully polished his satire, and had it put in 
type by Ridge. 

On leaving Cambridge he had settled at Newstead, given up in 



5IO SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

ruinous condition by Lord Grey in the previous April, where he 
had a few rooms made habitable, and celebrated his coming of 
age by some meagre approach to the usual festivities. A favour- 
able decision in the courts had given him hopes of Rochdale, and 
made him, he says, 60,000/. richer. The suit, however, dragged 
on through his life. Meanwhile he had to raise money to make 
repairs and maintain his establishment at Newstead, with which he 
declares his resolution never to part (Letter of 6 March 1809). 
The same letter announces the death of his friend Lord Falkland 
in a duel. In spite of his own difficulties Byron tried to help the 
widow, stood godfather to her infant, and left a 500/. note for his 
godchild in a breakfast cup In a letter from Mrs. Byron {Athe- 
nmum, 6 Sept. 1884) this is apparently mentioned as a loan to Lady 
Falkland. On 13 March he took his seat in the House of Lords. 
Lord Carlisle had acknowledged the receipt of 'Hours of Idleness,' 
the second edition of which had been dedicated to him, in a 
'tolerably handsome letter,' but would take no trouble about 
introducing his ward. Byron was accompanied to the house 
by no one but Dallas, a small author, whose sister was the wife 
of Byron's uncle, George Anson, and who had recently sought his 
acquaintance. Byron felt his isolation, and sulkily put aside a 
greeting from the chancellor (Eldon). He erased a compliment 
to Carlisle and substituted a bitter attack in his satire which was 
now going through the press under Dallas's superintendence. 
'English Bards and Scotch Reviewers' appeared in the middle of 
March, and at once made its mark. He prepared a second edition 
at the end of April with additions and a swaggering prose postscript, 
announcing his departure from England and declaring that his 
motive was not fear of his victims' antipathies. The satire is 
vigorously written and more carefully polished than Byron's later 
efforts ; but has not the bitterness, the keenness, or the fine work- 
manship of Pope. The retort upon his reviewers is only part of a 
long tirade upon the other poets of the day. In 1816 Byron made 
some annotations on the poem at Geneva, admitting the injustice 
of many lines. A third and fourth edition appeared in 1810 and 
181 1 ; in the last year he prepared a fifth for the press. He sup- 
pressed it, as many of his adversaries were now on friendly terms 
with him, and destroyed all but one copy, from which later editions 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 511 

have been printed. He told Murray (23 Oct. 181 7) that he would 
never consent to its republication. 

Byron had for some time contemplated making his 'grand tour.' 
In the autumn of 1808 he got up a play at Newstead; he buried 
his Newfoundland, Boatswain, who died of madness 18 Nov. 1808, 
under a monument with a misanthropical inscription; and in 
the following spring entertained his college friends. C. S. Mat- 
thews describes their amusements in a letter published by Moore. 
They dressed themselves in theatrical costumes of monks (with a 
recollection, perhaps, of Medmenham), and drank burgundy out 
of a human skull found near the abbey, which Byron had fash- 
ioned into a cup with an appropriate inscription. Such revelries 
suggested extravagant rumours of reckless orgies and 'harems' 
in the abbey. Moore assures us that the life there was in reality 
'simple and inexpensive,' and the scandal of limited application. 

Byron took leave of England by some verses to Mrs. Musters 
about his blighted affections, and sailed from Falmouth in the 
Lisbon packet on 2 July 1809. Hobhouse accompanied him, and 
he took three servants, Fletcher (who followed him to the last), 
Rushton, and Joe Murray. From Lisbon he rode across Spain 
to Seville and Cadiz, and thence sailed to Gibraltar in the Hyperion 
frigate in the beginning of August. He sent home Murray and 
Rushton with instructions for the proper education of the latter 
at his own expense. He sailed in the packet for Malta on 19 Aug. 
1809, in company with Gait, who afterwards wrote his life, and who 
was rather amused by the affectations of the youthful peer. At 
Malta he fell in with a Mrs. Spencer Smith with a romantic history 
(see Memoirs of the Duchesse d'Abrantes (1834), xv. 1-74), to whom 
he addressed the verses 'To Florence,' 'stanzas composed during 
a thunderstorm,' and a passage in 'Childe Harold' (ii. st. 30-3), 
explaining that his heart was now past the power of loving. From 
Malta he reached Prevesa in the Spider, brig of war, on 19 Sept. 
1809. He thence visited Ali Pasha at Tepelen, and was nearly 
lost in a Turkish man-of-war on his return. In November he 
travelled to Missolonghi (21 Nov.) through Acarnania with a guard 
of Albanians. He stayed a fortnight at Patras, and thence left 
for Athens. He reached Athens on Christmas eve and lodged 
with Theodora Macri, widow of the English vice-consul, who had 



512 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

three lovely daughters. The eldest, Theresa, celebrated by Byron 
as the Maid of Athens, became Mrs. Black. She fell into poverty, 
and an appeal for her support was made in the 'Times' on 23 
March 1872. She died in October 1875 {Times, 21, 25, 27 Oct. 
1875). He sailed from Athens for Smyrna in the Pylades, sloop 
of war, on 5 March 18 10; visited Ephesus; and on 11 April sailed 
in the Salsette frigate for Constantinople, and visited the Troad. 
On 3 May he repeated Leander's feat of swimming from Sestos 
to Abydos. In February 1821 he wrote a long letter to Murray, 
defending his statements against some criticisms in W. Turner's 
'Tour in the Levant' (see Appendix to Moore). Byron reached 
Constantinople on 14 May, and sailed in the Salsette on 14 July. 
Hobhouse returned to England, while Byron landed at Zea, with 
Fletcher, two Albanians, and a Tartar, and returned to Athens. 
Here he professed to have met with the adventure turned to account 
in the 'Giaour' about saving a girl from being drowned in a sack. 
A letter from Lord Sligo, who was then at Athens, to Byron (31 Aug. 
1 8 13), proves that some such report was current at Athens a day 
or two later, and may possibly have had some foundation. Hob- 
house {Westminster Review, January 1825) says that Byron's 
Turkish servant was the lover of the girl. He made a tour in the 
Morea, had a dangerous fever at Patras (which left a liability to 
malaria), and returned to Athens, where he passed the winter of 
1810-11 in the Capuchin convent. Here he met Lady Hester 
Stanhope, and formed one of his strong attachments to a youth 
called Nicolo Giraud. To this lad he gave a sum of money on 
parting, and left him 7,000/. in a will of August 181 1. From 
Athens Byron went to Malta, and sailed thence for England in 
the Volage frigate on 3 June 181 1. He reached Portsmouth at the 
beginning of July, and was met by Dallas at Reddish 's Hotel 
St. James's Street, on 15 July 181 1. 

Byron returned to isolation and vexation. He had told his 
mother that, if compelled to part with Newstead, he should retire 
to the East. To Hodgson he wrote while at sea (Letter 51) that he 
was returning embarrassed, unsocial, 'without a hope and almost 
without a desire.' His financial difficulties are shown by a series 
of letters published in the 'Athenaeum' (30 Aug. and 6 Sept. 1884). 
The court of chancery had allowed him 500/. a year at Cambridge, 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 513 

to which his mother had added as much, besides incurring a debt 
of 1,000/. on his behalf. He is reduced to his last guinea in De- 
cember 1807, has obtained loans from Jews, and expects to end by- 
suicide or the marriage of a 'golden dolly.' His mother was put 
to the greatest difficulties during his travels, and he seems to have 
been careless in providing for her wants. The bailiffs were at 
Newstead in February 1810; a sale was threatened in June. 
Byron writes from Athens in November refusing to sell Newstead. 
While returning to England he proposed to join the army, and had 
to borrow money to pay for his journey to London. News of his 
mother's illness came to him in London, and before he could 
reach her she died (i Aug. 181 1) of 'a fit of rage caused by reading 
the upholsterer's bills.' The loss affected him deeply, and he was 
found sobbing by her remains over the loss of his one friend in the 
world. The deaths of his school-friend Wingfield (14 May 181 1), 
of C. S. Matthews, and of Eddlestone, were nearly simultaneous 
blows, and he tells Miss Pigot that the last death ' made the sixth, 
within four months, of friends and relatives lost between May and 
the end of August.' In February 181 2 he mentions Eddlestone 
to Hodgson {Memoirs, i. 221) as the 'only human being that ever 
loved him in truth and entirely.' He adds that where death has 
set his seal the impression can never be broken. The phrase 
recurs in the most impressive of the poems to Thyrza, dated in 
the same month. The coincidence seems to confirm Moore's 
statement that Thyrza was no more than an impersonation of 
Byron's melancholy caused by many losses. An apostrophe to 
a ' loved and lovely one ' at the end of the second canto of ' Childe 
Harold' (st. 95, 96) belongs to the same series. Attempts to 
identify Thyrza have failed. Byron spoke to Trelawny of a pas- 
sion for a cousin who was in a decline when he left England, and 
whom Trelawny identifies with Th)n*za. No one seems to answer 
to the description. It may be added that he speaks (see Moore, 
chap, iv.) of a 'violent, though pure love and passion' which ab- 
sorbed him while at Cambridge, and writes to Dallas (11 Oct. 
181 1) of a loss about this time which would have profoundly moved 
him but that he 'has supped full of horrors,' and that Dallas un- 
derstands him as referring to some one who might have made him 
happy as a wife. Byron had sufficient elasticity of spirit for a 

2L 



514 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

defiance of the world, and a vanity keen enough to make a boastful 
exhibition of premature cynicism and a blighted heart. 

At the end of October 1811 he took lodgings in St. James's 
Street. He had shown to Dallas upon his return to England the 
first two cantos of 'Childe Harold' and 'Hints from Horace,' 
a tame paraphrase of the 'Ars Poetica.' According to Dallas, 
he preferred the last, and was unwilling to publish the 'Childe.' 
Cawthorn, who had published the 'English Bards,' &c.j accepted 
the 'Hints' (which did not appear till after Byron's death), but 
the publication was delayed, apparently for want of a good classical 
reviser (To Hodgson, 13 Oct. 181 1). The Longmans had re- 
fused the 'English Bards,' which attacked their friends, and Byron 
told Dallas to offer 'Childe Harold' elsewhere. Miller objected 
to the attack upon Lord Elgin (as the despoiler of the Parthenon), 
for whom he published ; and it was ultimately accepted by Mur- 
ray, who thus began a permanent connection with Byron. ' Childe 
Harold' appeared in March 181 2. Byron had meanwhile spoken 
for the first time in the House of Lords, 27 Feb. 181 2, against a bill 
for suppressing riots of Nottingham frameworkers, and with con- 
siderable success. A second and less successful speech against 
catholic disabilities followed on 21 April 181 2. He made one 
other short speech in presenting a petition from Major Cartwright 
on I June 1813. Lord Holland helped him in providing materials 
for the first, and the speeches indicate a leaning towards something 
more than whiggism. The first two are of rather elaborate rhetoric, 
and his delivery was criticised as too theatrical and sing-song. 
Any political ambition was extinguished by the startling success 
of 'Childe Harold,' of which a first edition was immediately sold. 
Byron 'woke one morning and found himself famous.' Murray 
gave 600/. for the copyright, which Byron handed over to Dallas, 
declaring that he would never take money for his poems. 

The two cantos now published are admittedly inferior to the 
continuation of the poem; and the affectation of which ft set the 
fashion is obsolete. Byron tells Murray (3 Nov. 1821) that he is 
like a tiger. If he misses his first spring, he goes ' grumbling 
back to the jungle again.' His poems are all substantially 
impromptus; but the vigour and descriptive power, in spite of 
all blemishes, are enough to explain the success of a poem origi- 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 



515 



nal in conception and setting forth a type of character which em- 
bodied a prevailing sentiment. 

Byron became the idol of the sentimental part of society. 
Friends and lovers of notoriety gathered round this fascinating 
rebel. Among the first was Moore, who had sent him a challenge 
for a passage in 'English Bards' ridiculing the bloodless duel with 
Jeffrey. Hodgson had suppressed the letter during Byron's 
absence. Moore now wrote a letter ostensibly demanding ex- 
planations, but more like a request for acquaintance. The two 
met at a dinner given by Rogers, where Campbell made a fourth. 
Byron surprised his new friends by the distinction of his appearance 
and the eccentricity of his diet, consisting of potatoes and vinegar 
alone. Moore was surprised at Byron's isolation. Dallas, his 
solicitor, Hanson, and three or four college friends were at this time 
(November 181 1) his only associates. Moore rapidly became 
intimate. Byron liked him as a thorough man of the world and 
as an expert in the arts which compensate for inferiority of birth, 
and which enabled Moore to act as an obsequious monitor and to 
smother gentle admonition in abundant flattery. In his diary 
(10 Dec. 1813) Byron says that Moore was the best-hearted man 
he knew and with talents equal to his feelings. Byron was now 
at the height of his proverbial beauty. Coleridge in 1816 speaks 
enthusiastically of the astonishing beauty and expressiveness of 
his face (Gillman, p. 267). Dark brown locks, curHng over a 
lofty forehead, grey eyes with long dark lashes, a mouth and chin 
of exquisite symmetry are shown in his portraits, and were ani- 
mated by an astonishing mobility of expression, varying from apathy 
to intense passion. His head was very small; his nose, though 
well formed, rather too thick; looking, says Hunt (i. 150), in a 
front view as if ' grafted on the face ; ' his complexion was colourless ; 
he had little beard. His height, he says {Diary, 17 March 181 4), 
5ft. 8 Jin. or a little less (Medwin, p. 5). He had a broad chest, 
long muscular arms, with white delicate hands, and beautiful 
teeth. A tendency to excessive fatness, inherited from his mother, 
was not only disfiguring but productive of great discomfort, and 
increased the unwieldiness arising from his lameness. To remedy 
the evil he resorted to the injurious system of diet often set down 
to mere affectation. Trelawny (ii. 74) observes more justly that 



5l6 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

Byron was the only human being he knew with self-restraint 
enough not to get fat. In April 1807 he tells Pigot that he has 
reduced himself by exercise, physic, and hot baths from i4st. 
7lbs. to i2st. 7lbs. ; in January 1808 he tells Drury that he has 
got down to lost. 7lbs. When last weighed at Genoa he was 
lost. gibs. (Trelawny). He carried on this system at intervals 
through life ; at Athens he drank vinegar and water, and seldom 
ate more than a little rice ; on his return he gave up wine and meat. 
He sparred with Jackson for exercise, and took hot baths. In 
1813 he lived on six biscuits a day and tea; in December he fasts 
for forty-eight hours; in 181 6 he lived on a thin slice of bread for 
breakfast and a vegetable dinner, drinking green tea and seltzer- 
water. He kept down hunger by chewing mastic and tobacco 
(Hunt, i. 65). He sometimes took laudanum {Diary, 14 Jan. 
1821; and Lady Byron's Letter, 18 Jan. 1816). He tells Moore 
(Letter 461) in 1821 that a dose of salts gave him most exhilaration. 
Occasional indulgences varied this course. Moore describes 
a supper (19 May 1814) when he finished two or three lobsters, 
washed down by half a dozen glasses of strong brandy, with 
tumblers of hot water. He wrote 'Don Juan' on gin and water, 
and Medwin (p. 336) speaks of his drinking too much wine and 
nearly a pint of hollands every night (in 1822). Trelawny (i.'73), 
however, declares that the spirits was mere ^ water bewitched.' 
When Hunt reached Pisa in 1822, he found Byron so fat as to be 
scarcely recognisable. Medwin, two or three months later, found 
him starved into 'unnatural thinness.' Such a diet was no doubt 
injurious in the long run ; but the starvation seems to have stimu- 
lated his brain, and Trelawny says that no man had brighter eyes 
or a clearer voice. 

In the spring of 181 3 Byron published anonymously the 'Waltz,' 
and disowned it on its deserved failure. Various avatars of ' Childe 
Harold,' however, repeated his previous success. The 'Giaour' 
appeared in May 1813 ; the 'Bride of Abydos' in December 1813; 
the ' Corsair' in January 1814. They were all struck off at a white 
heat. The ' Giaour ' was increased from 400 lines in the first edition 
to 1,400 in the fifth, which appeared in the autumn of 1813. The 
first sketch of the 'Bride' was written in four nights {Diary, 16 
Nov. 1813) 'to distract his dreams from . . . ,' and afterwards 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 517 

increased by 200 lines. The ' Corsair,' written in ten days, or 
between 18 and 31 Dec, was hardly touched afterwards. He 
boasted afterwards that 14,000 copies of the last were sold in a day. 
With its first edition appeared the impromptu lines, 'Weep, 
daughter of a royal line;' the Princess Charlotte having wept, it 
was said, on the inability of the whigs to form a cabinet on Per- 
ceval's death. The lines were the cause of vehement attacks 
upon the author by the government papers. A satire called ' Anti- 
Byron,' shown to him by Murray in March 181 4, indicated the 
rise of a hostile feeling. Byron was annoyed by the shift of 
favour. He had said in the dedication of the ' Corsair ' to Moore 
that he should be silent for some years, and on 9 April 1814 tells 
Moore that he has given up rhyming. The same letter announces 
the abdication of Napoleon, and next day he composed and sent 
to Murray his ode upon that event. On 29 April he tells Murray 
that he has resolved to buy back his copyrights and suppress his 
poetry, but he instantly withdrew the resolution on Murray's 
assurance that it would be inconvenient. By the middle of June 
he had finished 'Lara,' which was published in the same volume 
with Rogers's 'Jacqueline' in August. The 'Hebrew Melodies,' 
written at the request of Kinnaird, appeared with music in January 
181 5. The 'Siege of Corinth,' begun July 181 5 and copied by 
Lady Byron, and 'Parisina,' written the same autumn, appeared 
in January and February 1816. Murray gave 700/. for 'Lara' 
and 500 guineas for each of the others. Dallas wrote to the papers 
in February 1814, defending his noble relative from the charge of 
accepting payment ; and stated that the money for ' Childe Harold ' 
and ' The Corsair ' had been given to himself. The sums due for 
the other two poems then published were still, it seems, in the 
publisher's hands. In the beginning of 1816 Byron declined to 
take the 1,000 guineas for 'Parisina' and the 'Siege of Corinth,' and 
it was proposed to hand over the money to Godwin, Coleridge, 
and Maturin. The plan was dropped at Murray's objection, and 
the poet soon became less scrupulous. These poems were written 
in the thick of many distractions. Byron was familiar at Holland, 
Melbourne, and Devonshire Houses. He knew Brummell and 
was one of the dandies; he was a member of Watier's, then a 
'superb club,' and appeared as a caloyer in a masquerade given 



5l8 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

by his fellow-members in 1 813; of the more literary and sober 
Alfred; of the Union, the Pugilistics, and the Owls, or 'Fly-by- 
nights.' He indulged in the pleasures of his class, with intervals 
of self-contempt and foreboding. Scott and Mme. de Stael (like 
Lady Byron) thought that a profound melancholy was in reality 
his dominant mood. He had reasons enough in his money em- 
barrassments and in dangerous entanglements. Fashionable 
women adored the beautiful young poet and tried to soothe his 
blighted affections. Lady Morgan (ii. 2) describes him as 'cold, 
silent, and reserved,' but doubtless not the less fascinating. Dal- 
las (iii. 41) observed that his coyness speedily vanished, and found 
him in a brown study writing to some fine lady whose page was 
waiting in scarlet and a hussar jacket. This may have been 
Lady Caroline Lamb, a woman of some talent, but flighty and 
excitable to the verge of insanity. She was born 23 Nov. 1785, 
the daughter of the Earl of Bessborough, and in June 1805 married 
William Lamb, afterwards Lord Melbourne. The women, as 
she says, 'suffocated him' when she first saw him. On her own 
introduction by Lady Westmorland, she turned on her heel and 
wrote in her diary that he was 'mad, bad, and dangerous to know.' 
The acquaintance was renewed at Lady Holland's, and for nine 
months he almost lived at Melbourne House, where he contrived 
to 'sweep away' the dancing, in which he could take no part. 
Lady Caroline did her best to make her passion notorious. She 
* absolutely besieged him,' says Rogers {Table Talk, p. 235); told 
him in her first letter that all her jewels were at his service ; waited 
at night for Rogers in his garden to ask him to reconcile her to 
Byron; and would return from parties in Byron's carriage or 
wait for him in the street if not invited. At last, in July 1813 (see 
Jackson, Bath Archives, ii. 146), it was rumoured in London that 
after a quarrel with Byron at a party Lady Caroline had tried to 
stab herself with a knife and then with the fragments of a glass 
(the party was on 5 July; Hayward, Eminent Statesmen, i. 350-3). 
Her mother now insisted upon her retirement to Ireland. After 
a farewell interview, Byron wrote her a letter (printed from the 
original manuscript in Jeaffreson, i. 261), which reads like an 
attempt to use the warmest phrases consistent with an acceptance 
of their separation, though ending with a statement of his readiness 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 519 

to fly with her. She corresponded with Byron from Ireland till 
on the eve of her return she received a brutal letter from him 
(printed in 'Glenarvon,' and apparently acknowledged by Byron, 
Medwin, p. 274), saying roundly that he was attached to an- 
other, and telling her to correct her vanity and leave him in peace. 
The letter, marked with Lady Oxford's coronet and initials, threw 
Lady Caroline into a fit, which involved leeching, bleeding, and 
bed for a week. 

Lady Caroline's mother-in-law. Lady Melbourne, was sister 
of Sir R. Milbanke, who, by his wife, Judith Noel, daughter of 
Lord Wentworth, was father of an only daughter, Anne Isabella 
Milbanke, born 17 May 1792. Miss Milbanke was a woman of 
intellectual tastes ; fond of theology and mathematics, and a writer 
of poems, one or two of which are published in Byron's works 
(two are given in Madame Belloc's 'Byron,' i. 68). Byron de- 
scribed her to Medwin (p. 36) as having small and feminine, though 
not regular, features; the fairest skin imaginable; perfect figure 
and temper and modest manners. She was on friendly terms with 
Mrs. Siddons, Miss Baillie, Miss Edgeworth, and other literary 
persons who frequented her mother's house (see Harness, p. 2^). 
A strong sense of duty, shown in a rather puritanical precision, led 
unsympathetic observers to regard her as prudish, pedantic, and 
frigid. Her only certain fortune was 10,000/. Her father had 
injured a considerable estate by electioneering. Her mother's 
brother. Lord Wentworth, was approaching seventy. His estate 
of some 7,000/. a year was at his own disposal, and she was held 
to be his favourite ; but he had illegitimate children, and his sister, 
Lady Scarsdale, had sons and a daughter. Miss Milbanke was 
therefore an heiress with rather uncertain prospects. Byron, from 
whatever motives, made her an offer in 181 2, which was refused, 
and afterwards opened a correspondence with her (Campbell, 
New Monthly, xxviii. 374, contradicts, on Lady Byron's authority, 
Medwin's statement (p. 37), that she began the correspondence), 
which continued at intervals for two years. On 30 Nov. 1813 he 
notices the oddness of a situation in which there is ' not a spark of 
love on either side.' On 15 March 1813 he receives a letter from 
her and says that he will be in love again if he does not take care. 
Meanwhile he and his friends naturally held that a marriage might 



520 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

be his salvation. Lady Melbourne, whom on her death in 1818 
he calls (Letter 316) the 'best, kindest, and ablest female' he ever 
knew, promoted a match with her niece, possibly because it would 
effectually bar the intrigue with her daughter-in-law. In Septem- 
ber 1814 he made an offer to Miss Milbanke in a letter, which, 
according to a story told by Moore, was the result of a momentary 
impulse. Byron may be acquitted of simply mercenary motives. 
He never acted upon calculation, and had he wished, he might 
probably have turned his attractions to better account. The sense 
that he was drifting into dangerous embarrassments, which (see 
Diary, 10 Dec. 1813) suggests hints of suicide, would no doubt 
recommend a match with unimpeachable propriety, as the lady's 
vanity was equally flattered by the thought of effecting such a con- 
version. Byron was pre-eminently a man who combined strange 
infirmity of will with overpowering gusts of passion. He drifted 
indolently as long as drifting was possible, and then acted im- 
petuously in obedience to the uppermost influence. 

Byron's marriage took place 2 Jan. 18 15 at Seaham, Durham, 
the seat of Sir R. Milbanke. The honeymoon was passed at 
Halnaby, another of his houses in the same county. The pair re- 
turned to Seaham 21 Jan. ; in March they visited Colonel and Mrs. 
Leigh at Six Mile Bottom, Newmarket, on their way to London, 
where they settled, 18 March 181 5, at 13 Piccadilly Terrace for the 
rest of their married life. Byron, in 'The Dream,' chose to de- 
clare that on his wedding day his thoughts had been with Miss 
Chaworth. He also told Med win (p. 39) that on leaving the house 
he found the lady's-maid placed between himself and his bride in 
the carriage. Hobhouse, who had been his 'best man,' authori- 
tatively contradicted this (Westminster Review, No. 5), and the 
statement of Mrs. Minns (first published in ' Newcastle Chronicle,' 
23 Sept. 1869), who had been Lady Byron's maid at Halnaby 
and previously, is that Lady Byron arrived there in a state ' buoyant 
and cheerful;' but that Byron's 'irregularities' began there and 
caused her misery, which she tried to conceal from her mother. 
Lady Byron also wrote to Hodgson (15 Feb. 1816) that Byron had 
married her 'with the deepest determination of revenge, avowed 
on the day of my marriage and executed ever since with systematic 
and increasing cruelty' (Byron contradicts some report to this 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 52 1 

effect to Medwin, p. 39). The letters written at the time, however, 
hardly support these statements. Byron speaks of his happiness 
to Moore, though he is terribly bored by his 'pious father-in-law' 
(see a reference to this in Trelawny, i. 72). Lady Milbanke 
speaks of their happiness at Seaham (Bland- Burgess Papers, 
p. 339). Mrs. Leigh tells Hodgson that Lady Byron's parents were 
pleased with their son-in-law, and reports favourably of the pair 
on their visit to Six Mile Bottom. In April Lord Wentworth died. 
The bulk of his property was settled upon Lady Milbanke (who, 
with her husband, now took the name of Noel) and Lady Byron. 
On 29 July 1 81 5 Byron executed the will proved after his death. 
He left all the property of which he could dispose in trust for Mrs. 
Leigh and her children, his wife and any children he might have 
by her being now amply provided for. Lady Byron fully ap- 
proved of this provision, and communicates it in an affectionate 
letter to Mrs. Leigh. 

Harness says that when the Byrons first came to London no 
couple could be apparently more devoted (Harness, p. 14) ; but 
troubles approached. Byron's expenses were increased. He had 
agreed to sell Newstead for 140,000/. in September 181 2; but two 
years later the purchaser withdrew, forfeiting 25,000/., which 
seems to have speedily vanished. In November 181 5 Byron had 
to sell his library, though he still declined Murray's offers for his 
copyrights. Creditors (at whose expense this questionable deli- 
cacy must have been exercised) dunned the husband of an heiress, 
and there were nine executions in his house within the year. He 
found distractions abroad. He was a zealous playgoer; Kean's 
performance of Sir Giles Overreach gave him a kind of convulsive 
fit — a story which recalls his mother's at the Edinburgh theatre, 
and of the similar effect afterwards, produced upon himself by 
Alfieri's 'Mirra' (Moore, chap. xxii.). He became member of 
the committee of management of Drury Lane, and was brought into 
connections of which Moore says that they gave no real cause of 
offence, though the circumstances were dangerous to the 'steadi- 
ness of married life.' We hear, too, of parties where all ended in 
' hiccup and happiness ; ' and it seems that Byron's dislike of 
seeing women eat led to a separation at the domestic board. The 
only harsh action to which he confessed was that Lady Byron once 



522 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

came upon him when he was musing over his embarrassments and 
asked 'Am I in your way?' to which he replied 'Dammably' 
(Med WIN, p. 43). 

On 10 Dec. 181 5 Lady Byron gave birth to her only child, 
Augusta Ada. On 6 Jan. 181 6 Byron gave directions to his wife 
'in writing' to leave London as soon as she was well enough. It 
was agreed, he told Medwin (p. 40), that she should stay with her 
father till some arrangement had been made with the creditors. 
On 8 Jan. Lady Byron consulted Dr. Baillie, 'with the concurrence 
of his family,' that is, apparently, Mrs. Leigh and his cousin, 
George Byron, with whom she constantly communicated in the 
following period. Dr. Baillie, on her expressing doubts of Byron's 
sanity, advised her absence as an 'experiment.' He told her to 
correspond with him on 'light and soothing' topics. She even 
believed that a sudden excitement might bring on a 'fatal crisis.' 
She left London on 15 Jan. 1816, reaching her parents at Kirkby 
Mallory on the i6th. She wrote affectionately to her husband on 
starting and arriving. The last letter, she says, was circulated 
to support the charge of desertion. It began, as Byron told Med- 
win, 'Dear Duck,' and was signed by her pet name 'Pippin' 
(Hunt, Autobiogr. i860, pp. 247, 254). She writes to Mrs. Leigh 
on the same day that she has made 'the most explicit statement' 
to her parents. They are anxious to do everything in their power 
for the 'poor sufferer.' He was to be invited at once to Kirkby 
Mallory, and her mother wrote accordingly on the 17th. He would 
probably drop a plan, already formed, for going abroad with Hob- 
house on her parents' remonstrance. On 18 Jan. she tells Mrs. 
Leigh that she hopes that Byron will join her for a time and not 
leave her till there is a prospect of an heir. Lady Noel has sug- 
gested that Mrs. Leigh might dilute a laudanum bottle with water 
without Byron's knowledge. She still writes as an affectionate 
wife, hoping that her husband may be cured of insanity. An 
apothecary, Le Mann, is to see the patient, and Lady Noel will 
go to London, consult Mrs. Leigh, and procure advice. 

The medical advisers could find no proof of insanity, though a 
list of sixteen symptoms had been submitted to them. The 
strongest, according to Moore, was the dashing to pieces of a 
'favourite old watch' in an excess of fury. A similar anecdote 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 523 

(Hodgson, ii. 6) was told of his throwing a jar of ink out of window, 
and his excitement at the theatre is also suggested. Lady Byron 
upon hearing the medical opinion immediately decided upon 
separation. Dr. Baillie and a lawyer, by Lady Noel's desire, 
'almost forced themselves upon Byron' (Medwin, p. 46), and con- 
firmed Le Mann's report. On 25 Jan. 1816 Lady Byron tells 
Mrs. Leigh that she must resign the right to be her sister, but 
hopes that no difference will be made in their feelings. From this 
time she consistently adhered to the view finally set forth in her 
statement in 1830. Her letters to Mrs. Leigh, to Hodgson, who 
had ventured to interv^ene, and her last letter to Byron (13 Feb. 
1816), take the same ground. Byron had been guilty of conduct 
inexcusable if he w^ere an accountable agent, and therefore making 
separation a duty when his moral responsibility was proved. She 
tells Mrs. Leigh and Hodgson that he married her out of revenge ; 
she tells Hodgson (15 Feb.) that her security depended on the 
'total abandonment of every moral and religious principle,' and 
tells Byron himself that to her affectionate remonstrances and 
forewarnings of consequences he had replied by a 'determination 
to be wicked though it should break my heart.' 

On 2 Feb. 1 816 Sir R. Noel proposed an amicable separation to 
Byron, which he at first rejected. Lady Byron went to London 
and saw Dr. Lushington, who, with Sir S. Romilly, had been con- 
sulted by Lady Noel, and had then spoken of possible reconciliation. 
Lady Byron now informed him of facts 'utterly unknown,' he 
says, ' I have no doubt, to Sir R. and Lady Noel.' His opinion was 
'entirely changed.' He thought reconciliation impossible, and 
should it be proposed he could take no part, 'professionally or 
otherwise, towards effecting it.' Mrs. Leigh requested an inter- 
view soon after, which Lady Byron declined 'with the greatest 
pain.' Lushington had forbidden any such inter\aew, as they 
'might be called upon to answer for the most private conversation.' 
In a following letter (neither dated) Lady Byron begs for the inter- 
view w^hich she had refused. She cannot bear the thought of not 
meeting, and the 'grounds of the case are in some degree changed' 
{Addit. MS. 31037, ff. ^^, 34). According to Lady Byron's state- 
ment (in 1830) Byron consented to the separation upon being told 
that the matter must otherwise come into court. We may easily 



524 "^/i? LESLIE STEPHEN 

believe that, as Mrs. Leigh tells Mr. Horton, Byron would be 
happy to 'escape the exposure,' whatever its precise nature. He 
afterwards threw the responsibility for reticence on the other side. 
He gave a paper to Mr. Lewis, dated at La Mira in 1817, saying 
that Hobhouse had challenged the other side to come into court; 
that he only yielded because Lady Byron had claimed a promise 
that he would consent to a separation if she really desired it. He 
declares his ignorance of the charges against him, and his desire to 
meet them openly. This paper was apparently shown only to a 
few friends. It was first made public in the 'Academy' of 9 Oct. 

1869. Hobhouse (see Quarterly Review for October 1869, January 

1870, and July 1883) also said that Byron was quite ready to go 
into court, and that Wilmot Horton on Lady Byron's part dis- 
claimed all the current scandals. It would seem, however, Byron 
could have forced an open statement had he really chosen to do so. 
This paper shows his consciousness that he ought to have done it if 
his case had been producible. Lady Byron tells Hodgson at the 
time (15 Feb. 1816) he 'does know, too well, what he affects to 
inquire.' 

The question remains, what were the specific charges which 
decided Lady Byron and Lushington? A happy marriage be- 
tween persons so little congenial would have surprised his best 
friends. So far we might well accept the statement which Moore 
assigns to him: 'My dear sir, the causes were too simple to be 
easily found out.' But this will not explain Lady Byron's state- 
ments at the time, nor the impression made upon Lushington by 
her private avowal. Lady Byron only exchanged the hypothesis of 
insanity for that of diabolical pride. Byron's lifelong habit of 
'inverse hypocrisy' may account for something. Harness reports 
(p. 32) that he used to send paragraphs to foreign papers injurious 
to his own character in order to amuse himself by mystifying the 
English public. Some of Lady Byron's statements may strengthen 
the belief that she had taken some such foolish brags too seriously. 

Other explanations have been offered. In 1856 Lady Byron 
told a story to Mrs. Beecher Stowe. She thought that by blasting 
his memory she might weaken the evil influence of his writings, 
and shorten his expiation in another world. Lady Byron died in 
i860. After the publication of the Guiccioli memoirs in 1868, 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 525 

Mrs. Stowe thought it her duty to publish the story in ' Macmillan's 
Magazine' for September 1869 and the 'Atlantic Monthly.' Her 
case is fully set forth, with documents and some explanations, in 
'Lady Byron Vindicated; a History of the Byron Controversy,' 
1870. According to Mrs. Stowe, Lady Byron accused her husband 
to Lushington of an incestuous intrigue with Mrs. Leigh. An 
examination of all that is known of Mrs. Leigh (see Quarterly 
Review, July 1869), of the previous relations between brother and 
sister, and especially of Lady Byron's affectionate relations to Mrs. 
Leigh at the time, as revealed in letters since published, proves this 
hideous story to be absolutely incredible. Till 1830 Mrs. Leigh 
continued to be on good terms with Lady Byron, and had conveyed 
messages between Byron and his wife during his life. The ap- 
pointment of a trustee under Byron's marriage settlements in 1830 
led to a disagreement. Lady Byron refused with consider- 
able irritation a request made by Mrs. Leigh. All acquaintance 
dropped, till in 1851 Lady Byron consented to an interview. Mrs. 
Leigh was anxious to declare that she had not (as she supposed 
Lady Byron to believe that she had) encouraged Byron's bitterness 
of feeling towards his wife. Lady Byron replied simply, ' Is that 
all?' No further communication followed, and Mrs. Leigh died 
18 Oct. 1 85 1. It can only be surmised that Lady Byron had be- 
come jealous of Byron's public and pointed expressions of love for 
his sister, contrasted so forcibly with his utterances about his wife, 
and in brooding over her wrongs had developed the hateful sus- 
picion communicated to Mrs. Stowe, and, as it seems, to others. 
It appears too, from a passage in the Guiccioli memoirs, that at 
a time when Byron was accused of 'every monstrous vice,' his 
phrases about his pure fraternal affection suggested some such 
addition to the mass of calumny ('Reminiscences of an Attache,' 
by Hubert Jerningham (1886), contains a curious statement by 
Mme. Guiccioli as to Byron's strong affection for his sister). 

Another suggestion made by Mr. Jeaffreson, that the cause was 
a connection formed by Byron about the time of the first separation 
with Jane Clairmont, daughter, by a previous marriage, of William 
Godwin's second wife, seems quite inadmissible. It entirely fails 
to explain Lady Byron's uniform assertions at the time and in 1830 
(see ante, and letter to Lady Anne Barnard, published by Lord 



526 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

Lindsay in the 'Times' in September 1869) that Byron had been 
guilty of conduct excusable only on the ground of insanity, and 
continued during their whole cohabitation. Byron's extreme wrath 
against a Mrs. Clermont (a former governess of Lady Byron's), 
whom he accused (Medwin, p. 43) of breaking open a desk, seems 
to suggest that some discovery was made subsequently to Lady 
Byron's departure from London, but affords no confirmation of this 
h3^othesis. 

The problem must remain unsolved. The scandal excited a 
general explosion of public indignation. In some 'Observations 
upon an article in "Blackwood's Magazine"' (dated 15 March 
1820, but not published till after Byron's death) Byron describes 
the state of feeling ; he was accused of ' every monstrous vice ; ' 
advised not to go to the theatre or to parliament for fear of public 
insults, and his friends feared violence from the mob when he 
started in his travelling carriage. This indignation, perhaps ex- 
aggerated (see HoBHOUSE in Westminster Review), has been ridi- 
culed ; and doubtless included mean and hateful elements — 
love of scandal and delight in trampling on a great name. Yet it 
was not unnatural. Byron's very guarded sceptical utterances in 
'Childe Harold' frightened Dallas into a formal and elaborate 
protest, and shocked a sensitive public extravagantly. He had 
been posing as a rebel against all the domestic proprieties. So long 
as his avowed license could pass for a literary affectation, or be 
condoned in the spirit of the general leniency shown to wild young 
men in the era of the prince regent, the protest was confined to the 
stricter classes. But when a Lara passed from the regions of fancy 
to 13 Piccadilly Terrace, matters became more serious. Byron 
was outraging a woman of the highest character and with the strong- 
est claims on his tenderness ; and a feeling arose such as that which, 
soon afterwards, show^ed itself when the prince regent passed from 
simple immorality to the persecution of a wife with infinitely 
less claims to respect than Lady Byron's. Lady Caroline Lamb 
claimed her part in the outcry by her wild novel of ' Glenarvon,' 
published at this time. 

The separation was signed, and Byron left his country for ever. 
Some friends still stood by him. Lady Jersey earned his lasting 
gratitude by giving an assembly in his honour; and Miss Mercer 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 527 

(afterwards Lady Keith) met him there with marked cordiality. 
Leigh Hunt in the ' Examiner ' and Perry in the ' Morning Chroni- 
cle' defended him. Mrs. Leigh's affection was his chief comfort, 
when even his cousin George took his wife's part (Medwin, p. 49). 
Two poems appeared in the papers, through the 'injudicious zeal 
of a friend,' says Moore, in the middle of April. 'A Sketch' 
(dated 29 March) is a savage onslaught upon Mrs. Clermont. 
'Fare thee well' (dated 17 March), written with tears, it is said, the 
marks of which still blot the manuscript, expostulates pathetically 
with his wife for inflicting a 'cureless wound.' On 8 March Byron 
told Moore that there was 'never a brighter, kinder, or more ami- 
able and agreeable being' than Lady Byron, and that no blame 
attached to her. He appeals to Rogers (25 March) to confirm his 
statement that he had never attacked her. In 1823 he repeated 
this statement to Lady Blessington (p. 117). In fact, however, he 
oscillated between attempts to preserve the air of an injured yet 
forgiving husband and outbursts of bitterness. At the instance of 
Mme. de Stael he made some kind of overture for reconciliation in 
1816, and (apparently) upon its failure wrote the 'Dream,' in- 
tended to show that his love had always been reserved for Mary 
Chaworth; and a novel upon the 'Marriage of Belphegor,' rep- 
resenting his own story. He destroyed it, says Moore, on hearing 
of her illness; but a fragment is given in the notes to 'Don Juan.' 
In a poem written at the same time, ' On hearing that Lady Byron 
was ill,' he attacks her implacability, and calls her a 'moral Cly- 
temnestra.' He never met Lady Blessington without talking of 
his domestic troubles. He showed an (unsent) conciliatory letter, 
and apologised for public allusions in his works. Some angry 
communications were suppressed by his friends, but the allusions 
in the last cantos of 'Childe Harold' and in 'Don Juan' were 
unpardonable. While Byron was bemoaning his griefs to even 
casual acquaintance with a strange incontinence of language, and 
circulating letters and lampoons, his occasional conciliatory moods 
were of little importance. Lady Blessington remarks on his 
curious forgetfulness of the way in which he had consoled himself 
when he complained of his wife's implacability. Her dignified 
reticence irritated and puzzled him, and his prevailing tone only 
illustrates the radical incompatibility of their characters. 



528 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

Byron sailed for Ostend (24 April 181 6) with a young Italian 
doctor, Polidori, a Swiss and two English servants, Rushton and 
Fletcher, who had both started with him in 1809. Byron's good 
nature to his servants was an amiable point in his character. Har- 
ness describes the 'hideous old woman' who had nursed him in his 
lodgings and followed him through all his English establishments, 
and speaks of his kindness to an old butler, Murray, at Newstead. 
Byron travelled in a large coach, imitated from Napoleon's, carry- 
ing bed, library, and kitchen, besides a caleche bought at Brussels. 
His expenses were considerable, and his scruples about copyright 
soon vanished. In 181 7 he was bargaining sharply with Murray. 
He demanded 600/. for the 'Lament of Tasso' and the last act 
of 'Manfred' (9 May 181 7). On 4 Sept. 181 7 he asks 2,500/. 
instead of 1,500/. for the fourth canto of 'Childe Harold,' accepting 
ultimately 2 ,000 guineas. The sums paid by Murray for copyrights 
to the end of 1821 amounted to 15,455/., including the amounts 
made over to Dallas. He must have received at least 12,500/. 
at this period, and the 1,100/. for 'Parisina' and the 'Siege of 
Corinth' was in Murray's hands. In November 181 7 he at last 
sold Newstead for 90,000 guineas. Payment of debts and mort- 
gages left the 60,000/. settled upon Lady Byron, the income of which 
was payable to Byron during his life. He was aggrieved by the 
refusal of his trustees in 1820 to invest this in a mortgage on 
Lord Blessington's estates (Diary, 24 Jan. 1821; Letter 374). 
Hanson, Byron's solicitor, went to Venice to obtain his signature 
to the necessary deeds in November 181 8 (Hodgson, ii. 53). 
Byron declared that he would receive no advantage from Lady 
Byron's property. On the death of Lady Noel in 1822, however, 
her fortune of 7,000/. or 8,000/. a year was divided equally between 
her daughter and Byron by arbitrators (Sir F. Burdett and Lord 
Dacre) ; and such a division had, it seems, been provided for in 
the deed of separation (Hobhouse in Westminster Review, January 
1825). Byron then became a rich man for his Italian position, 
and grew careful of money. He spent much time in settling his 
weekly bills (Trelawny, ii. 75), and affected avarice as a 'good 
old gentlemanly vice.' But this must be taken as partly humor- 
ous, and he was still capable of munificence. 

From Brussels Byron visited Waterloo, and thence went to 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 529 

Geneva by the Rhine, where (June 1816) he took the Villa Diodati, 
on the Belle Rive, a promontory on the south side of the lake (see 
Notes and Queries, 5th ser. viii. i, 24, 115). Here Byron met 
the Shelleys and Miss Clairmont. Miss Clairmont came ex- 
pressly to meet him, but it is authoritatively stated that the Shelleys 
were not in her confidence. The whole party became the objects 
of curiosity and scandal. . Tourists gazed at Byron through tele- 
scopes (see letter from Shelley, Guiccioli, i. 97). When he visited 
Mme. de Stael at Cappet, a Mrs. Hervey thought proper to faint. 
Southey was in Switzerland this year, and Byron believed that he 
had spread stories in England imputing gross immorality to the 
whole party. They amused themselves one rainy week by writing 
ghost stories; Mrs. Shelley began 'Frankenstein,' and Byron a 
fragment called 'The Vampire,' from which Polidori 'vamped 
up ' a novel of the same name. It passed as Byron's .in France and 
had some success. Polidori, a fretful and flighty youth, quarrelled 
with his employer, proposed to challenge Shelley, and left Byron 
for Italy. He was sent out of Milan for a quarrel with an Austrian 
officer, but afterwards got some patients. Byron tried to help him, 
and recommended him to Murray (Letters 275, 285). He com- 
mitted suicide in 1821. Byron and Shelley made a tour of the lake 
in June (described in Shelley's 'Six Weeks' Tour'), and were 
nearly lost in a storm. Two rainy days at Ouchy produced Byron's 
'Prisoner of Chillon;' and about the same time he finished the 
third canto of 'Childe Harold.' Shelley, as Byron told Medwin 
(p. 237), had dosed him with Wordsworth 'even to nausea,' and 
the influence is apparent in some of his ' Childe Harold ' stanzas 
(see Wordsworth's remarks in Moore's Diary (1853), iii. 161). 
In September Byron made a tour in the Bernese Oberland with 
Hobhouse, and, as his diary shows, worked up his impressions of 
the scenery. At the Villa Diodati he wrote the stanzas 'To Au- 
gusta' and the verses addressed to 'My sweet sister,' which by 
her desire were suppressed till after his death. Here, too, he wrote 
the monody on the death of Sheridan, and the striking fragment 
called 'Darkness.' 

On 29 Aug. the Shelley party left for England. In January 
1 81 7 Miss Clairmont gave birth to Allegra, Byron's daughter. 
The infant was sent to him at Venice with a Swiss nurse, and 

2M 



53© SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

placed under the care of the Hoppners. Byron declined an offer 
from a Mrs. Vavasour to adopt the girl, refusing to abdicate his 
paternal authority as the lady desired. He afterwards sent for 
the child to Bologna in August 1819, and kept her with him at 
Venice and Ravenna till April 1S21, when he placed her in a con- 
vent at Bagna-Cavallo (twelve miles from Ravenna), paying 
double fees to insure good treatment. . He wished her, he said, 
to be a Roman catholic, and left her 5,000/. for a marriage portion. 
The mother vehemently protested against this {Eg. MS. 2332), 
but the Shelleys approved (To Hoppner, 11 May 1821; To 
Shelley, 26 April 182 1). The child improved in the convent, and 
is described by Shelley as petted and happy (Garnett, Select 
Letters of Shelley, p. 171, 1882). She died of a fever 20 April 
1822. Byron was profoundly agitated by the news, and, as the 
Countess Guiccioli says, would never afterwards pronounce her 
name. He directed her to be buried at Harrow, and a tablet to 
be erected in the church, at a spot precisely indicated by his 
school recollections (Letter 494). Of the mother he spoke with 
indifference or aversion (Blessington, p. 164). Byron and 
Hobhouse crossed the Simplon, and reached Milan by October. 
At Milan Beyle (Stendhal) saw him at the theatre, and has de- 
scribed his impressions (see his Letter first published in Mme. 
Belloc's Byron, i. 353, Paris, 1824). He went by Verona to 
Venice, intending to spend the winter in this ' the greenest island,' 
as he says, 'of my imagination.' He stayed for three years, tak- 
ing as a summer residence a house at La Mira on the Brenta. 
April and May 181 7 were spent in a visit to Rome, whence, 5 
May, he sent to Murray a new third act of 'Manfred,' having 
heard that the original was thought unsatisfactory. 

On arriving at Venice he found that his 'mind wanted some- 
thing craggy to break upon' (Letter 252), and he set to work learn- 
ing Armenian at the monastery. He saw something of the literary 
salon of the Countess Albrizzi. Mme. Albrizzi wrote a book of 
portraits, one of which is a sketch of Byron, published by Moore, 
and not without interest. He became bored with the Venetian 
'blues,' and took to the less pretentious salon of the Countess 
Benzoni. He soon plunged into worse dissipations. He settled 
in the Palazzo Mocenigo on the Grand Canal. And here, in 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 53 1 

ostentatious defiance of the world, which tried to take the form 
of contempt, he abandoned himself to degrading excesses which 
injured his constitution, and afterwards produced bitter self- 
reproach. 'J detest every recollection of the place, the people, 
and my pursuits,' he said to Medwin (p. 78). Shelley, whose im- 
pressions of a visit to Byron are given in the famous 'Julian and 
Maddalo,' says afterwards that Byron had almost destroyed him- 
self. He could digest no food, and was consumed by hectic fever. 
Daily rides on the Lido kept him from prostration. Moore says 
that Byron would often leave his house in a fit of disgust to pass 
the night in his gondola. In the midst of this debasing life his 
intellectual activity continued. He began the fourth canto of 
'Childe Harold' by i July 1817, and sent 126 stanzas (afterwards 
increased to 186) to Murray on 20 July. On 23 Oct. he states 
that 'Beppo,' in imitation, as he says, of ' Whistlecraf t ' (J. H. 
Frere), is nearly finished. It was sent to Murray 19 Jan. 181 9, 
and published in May. This experiment led to his greatest per- 
formance. On 19 Sept. 181 8 he has finished the first canto of 
'Don Juan.' On 25 Jan. 181 9 he tells Murray to print fifty copies 
for private distribution. On 6 April he sends the second canto. 
The two were published without author's or publisher's name in 
July 1819. The third canto was begun in October 1819. The 
outcry against its predecessors had disconcerted him, and he was 
so put out by hearing that a Mr. Saunders had called it 'all Grub 
Street,' as to lay it aside for a time. The third canto was split into 
the third and fourth in February 1820, and appeared with the fifth, 
still anonymously and without the publisher's name, in August 1821. 
A new passion had altered his life. In April 181 9 he met at 
the Countess Benzoni's Teresa, daughter of Count Gamba of 
Ravenna, recently married at the age of sixteen to a rich widower 
of sixty. Count Guiccioli, also of Ravenna. Her beauty is de- 
scribed by Moore, an American painter West, who took her portrait, 
Medwin, and Hunt. She had regular features, a fine figure, 
rather too short and stout, and was remarkable among Italians for 
her fair complexion, golden hair (see Jeaffreson, ii. 80), and blue 
eyes. She at once conceived a passion for Byron, and they met 
daily at Venice. Her husband took her back to Ravenna in the 
same month, and she wrote passionate letters to Byron. She had 



532 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

fainted three times on her first day's journey; her mother's death 
had deeply affected her; she was ill, and threatened by consump- 
tion; and she told him in May that her relations would receive 
him at Ravenna. In spite of heat and irresolution, Byron left La 
Mira on 2 June 1819, and moved slowly, and after some hesitation, 
to Ravenna, writing on the way 'River that rollest by the ancient 
walls' (first published by Medwin). Here he found the countess 
really ill. He studied medical books, she says, for her benefit, 
and sent for Aglietti, the best physician in Venice. As she re- 
covered, Byron felt rather awkward under the polite attentions 
of her husband, though her own relations were unfavourable. 
His letters to her, says Moore, show genuine passion. His letters 
to Hoppner show a more ambiguous interest. He desired at times 
to escape from an embarrassing connection; yet, out of 'wil- 
fulness,' as Moore thinks, when she was to go with her husband to 
Bologna, he asked her to fly with him, a step altogether desperate 
according to the code of the time. Though shocked by the pro- 
posal, she suggested a sham death, after the Juliet precedent. 
Byron followed the Guicciolis to Bologna, and stayed there while 
they made a tour of their estates. Hence (23 Aug.) he sent off to 
Murray his cutting 'Letter to my Grandmother's Review.' Two 
days later he wrote a curious declaration of love to the countess in 
a volume of 'Corinna' left in her house. A vehement quarrel 
with a papal captain of dragoons for selling him an unsound horse 
nearly led to an impromptu duel like his granduncle's. On the 
return of the Guicciolis the count left for Ravenna, leaving his 
wife with Byron at Bologna 'on account of her health.' Her 
health also made it expedient to travel with Byron to Venice by 
way of the Euganean Hills ; and at Venice the same cause made 
country air desirable, whereupon Byron politely 'gave up to her 
his house at La Mira,' and 'came to reside there' himself. The 
whole proceeding was so like an elopement, that Venetian society 
naturally failed to make a distinction. Moore paid a visit to 
Byron at this time, was cordially received at La Mira, and lodged 
in the palace at Venice. Hanson had described Byron in the 
previous year as 'enormously large' (Hodgson, ii. 2), and Moore 
was struck by the deterioration of his looks. He found that his 
friend had given up, or been given up by, Venetian society. 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 533 

English tourists stared at him like a wild beast, and annoyed him 
by their occasional rudeness. It was at this time that Byron gave 
his memoirs to Moore, stipulating only that they should not appear 
during his lifetime. Moore observed that they would make a nice 
legacy for his little Tom. Moore was alarmed at Byron's position. 
The Venetians were shocked by the presence of his mistress under 
his roof, especially as he had before 'conducted himself so ad- 
mirably.' A proposed trip to Rome, to which Byron had almost 
consented, was abandoned by Moore's advice, as it would look 
like a desertion of the countess. The count now wrote to his wife 
proposing that Byron should lend him 1,000/., for which he would 
pay 5 per cent. ; the loan would otherwise be an avvilimento. 
Moore exhorted Byron to take advantage of this by placing the 
lady again under her husband's protection, a result which would 
be well worth the money. Byron laughingly declared that he 
would 'save both the lady and the money.' The count himself 
came to Venice at the end of October. After a discussion, in 
which Byron declined to interfere, the lady agreed to return to her 
husband and break with her lover. Byron, set free, almost re- 
solved to return to England. Dreams of settling in Venezuela 
under Bolivar's new republic occasionally amused him, and he 
made serious inquiries about the country. The return to England, 
made desirable by some business affairs (Letters 346, 359, 367), 
was apparently contemplated as a step towards some of these plans, 
though he also thought a year later (Letter 403) of settling in Lon- 
don to bring out a paper with Moore. In truth, he was restless, 
dissatisfied, and undecided. He shrank from any decided action, 
from tearing himself from Italy, and, on the other hand, from such 
a connection with the countess as would cause misery to both 
unless his passion were more durable than any one, he least of all, 
could expect. The journey to England was nearly settled, how- 
ever, when he was delayed by an illness of Allegra, and a touch 
of malaria in himself. The countess again wrote to him that she 
was seriously ill, and that her friends would receive him. While 
actually ready for a start homewards, he suddenly declared that 
if the clock struck one before some final preparation was ready, 
he would stay. It struck, and he gave up the journey. He wrote 
to the countess that he would obey her, though his departure would 



534 ^^^ LESLIE STEPHEN ■ 

have been best for them all. At Christmas 1819 he was back in 
Ravenna. 

He now subsided into an indolent routine, to which he adhered 
with curious pertinacity. Trelawny describes the day at Pisa 
soon afterwards, and agrees with Moore, Hunt, Medwin, and 
Gamba. He rose very late, took a cup of green tea, had a biscuit 
and soda-water at two, rode out and practised shooting, dined 
most abstemiously, visited the Gambas in the evening, and re- 
turned to read or write till two or three in the morning. At Ra- 
venna previously and afterwards in Greece he kept nearly to the 
same hours. His rate of composition at this period was surprising. 
Medwin says that after sitting with Byron till two or three the poet 
would next day produce fresh work. He discontinued 'Don 
Juan ' after the fifth canto in disgust at its reception, and in com- 
pliance with the request of the Countess Guiccioli, who was shocked 
at its cynicism. In February 1820 he translated the 'Morgante 
Maggiore;' in March the 'Francesca da Rimini' episode. On 
4 April he began his first drama, the 'Marino Faliero,' finished it 
16 July, and copied it out by 17 Aug. It was produced at Drury 
Lane the next spring, in spite of his remonstrance, and failed, to 
his great annoyance. 'Sardanapalus,' begun 13 Jan. 1821, was 
finished 13 May (the last three acts in a fortnight). The 'Two 
Foscari' was written between 11 June and 10 July; 'Cain,' begun 
on 16 July, was finished 9 Sept. The 'Deformed Transformed' 
was written at the end of the same year. ' Werner,' a mere drama- 
tisation of Harriet Lee's 'Kruitzner' in the 'Canterbury Tales,' 
was written between 18 Dec. 1821 and 20 Jan. 1822. The vigorous, 
though perverse, letters to Bowles on the Pope controversy are also 
dated 7 Feb. and 25 March 1821. No literary hack could have 
written more rapidly, and some would have written as well. The 
dramas thus poured forth at full speed by a thoroughly undra- 
matic writer, hampered by the wish to preserve the 'unities,' 
mark (with the exception of ' Cain ') his lowest level, and are often 
mere prose broken into apparent verse. 

Count Guiccioli began to give trouble. Byron was warned not 
to ride in the forest alone for fear of probable assassination. Guic- 
cioli's long acquiescence had turned public opinion against him, 
and a demand for separation on account of his ' extraordinary 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 535 

usage' of his wife came from her friends. On 12 July a papal 
decree pronounced a separation accordingly. The countess was 
to receive 200/. a year from her husband, to live under the paternal 
roof, and only to see Byron under restrictions. She retired to 
a villa of the Gambas fifteen miles off, where Byron rode out to see 
her 'once or twice a month,' passing the intervals in 'perfect 
solitude.' By January 1821, however {Diary, 4 Jan. 1821), she 
seems to have been back in Ravenna. Byron did all he could 
{Diary, 24 Jan. 1821, and Letter 374) to prevent her from leaving 
her husband. 

Political complications were arising. Italy was seething with 
the Carbonaro conspiracies. The Gambas were noted liberals. 
Byron's aristocratic vanity was quite consistent with a conviction 
of the corruption and political blindness of the class to which he 
boasted of belonging. The cant, the imbecility, and immorality 
of the ruling classes at home and abroad were the theme of much 
of his talk, and inspired his most powerful writing. His genuine 
hatred of war and pity for human suffering are shown, amidst much 
affectation, in his loftiest verse. Though no democrat after the 
fashion of Shelley, he was a hearty detester of the system sup- 
ported by the Holy alliance. He was ready to be a leader in the 
revolutionary movements of the time. The walls of Ravenna 
were placarded with 'Up with the repubhc!' and 'Death to the 
pope!' Young Count Gamba (Teresa's brother) soon after- 
wards returned to Ravenna, became intimate with Byron, and 
introduced him to the secret societies. On 8 Dec. 1820 the com- 
mandant of the troops in Ravenna was mortally wounded in the 
street. Byron had the man carried into his house at the point of 
death, and describes the event in 'Don Juan' (v. 34). It was due 
in some way to the action of the societies. A rising in the Ro- 
magna was now expected. Byron had offered a subscription of 
one thousand louis to the constitutional government in Naples, 
to which the societies looked for support. He had become head 
of the Americani, a section of the Carbonari (Letter 450), and 
bought some arms for them, which during the following crisis 
were suddenly returned to him, and had to be concealed in his 
house {Diary, 16 and 18 Feb. 1821). An advance of Austrian 
troops caused a collapse of the whole scheme. A thousand mem- 



536 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

bers of the best families in the Roman states were banished (Letter 
439), and among them the Gambas. Mme. GuiccioH says that the 
government hoped by exihng them to get rid of Byron, whose 
position as an Enghsh nobleman made it difficult to reach him 
directly for his suspected relations with the Carbonari. The 
countess helped, perhaps was intentionally worked upon, to dis- 
lodge him. Her husband requested that she should be forced to 
return to him or placed in a convent. Frightened by the threat, 
she escaped to her father and brother in Florence. 

A quarrel in which a servant of Byron's proposed to stiletto an 
officer made his relations with the authorities very * unpleasant. 
The poor of Ravenna petitioned that the charitable Englishman 
might be asked to remain, and only increased the suspicions of 
the government. Byron fell into one of his usual states of in- 
decision. Shelley, at his request, came from Pisa to consult, and 
reports him greatly improved in health and morals. He found 
Byron occupying splendid apartments in the palace of Count 
Guiccioli. Byron had now, he says, an income of 4,000/. a year, 
and devoted 1,000/. to charity (the context seems to disprove the 
variant reading 100/.), an expenditure sufficient to explain the 
feeling at Ravenna mentioned by Mme. Guiccioli. Shelley, by 
Byron's desire, wrote to the countess, advising her against Switzer- 
land. In reply she begged Shelley not to leave Ravenna without 
Byron, and Byron begged him to stay and protect him from a 
relapse into his old habits. Byron lingered at Ravenna till 29 
Oct., still hoping, it seems, for a recall of the Gambas. At last he 
got in motion, with many sad forebodings, and preceded by his 
family of monkeys, dogs, cats, and peahens. He met Lord Clare 
on the way to Bologna, and accompanied Rogers from Bologna. 
Rogers duly celebrated the meeting in his poem on Italy; but 
Trelawny (i. 50) tells how Byron grinned sardonically when he 
saw Rogers seated upon a cushion under which was concealed 
a bitter satire written by Byron upon Rogers himself (it was after- 
wards published in 'Fraser,' January 1833). Byron settled in 
the Casa Lanfranchi at Pisa, an old ghost-haunted palace, which 
Trelawny contrasted with the cheerful and hospitable abode of 
the Shelleys (i. 85). The Gambas occupied part of the same palace 
(Hunt, Byron, i. 23). Byron again saw some English society. 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 537 

A silly Irishman named Taaffe, author of a translation of Dante, 
for which Byron tried to find a publisher, with Medwin, Trelawny, 
Shelley, and Williams, were his chief associates. Medwin, of 
the 24th light dragoons, was at Pisa from 30 Nov. 1821 till 15 March 
1822, and again for a few days in August. Trelawny, who reached 
Pisa early in 1822, and was afterwards in constant intercourse 
with Byron, was the keenest observer who has described him. 
Trelawny insists upon his own superiority in swimming, and re- 
gards Byron as an effeminate pretender to masculine qualities. 
Byron turned his worst side to such a man; yet Trelawny admits 
his genuine courage and can do justice to his better qualities. 

Mme. Guiccioli had withdrawn her prohibition of 'Don Juan' 
on promise of better behaviour (Letter 500). On 8 Aug. 1822 
he has finished three more cantos and is beginning another. 
Meanwhile 'Cain' (published December 1821) had produced 
hostile reviews and attacks. Scott had cordially accepted the 
dedication. Moore's timid remonstrances showed the set of public 
opinion. When Murray applied for an injunction to protect his 
property against threatened piracy, Eldon refused; holding (9 
Feb. 1822) that the presumption was not in favour of the innocent 
character of the book. Murray had several manuscripts of Byron 
in hand, including the famous 'Vision of Judgment;' and this 
experience increased his caution. Byron began to think of a plan, 
already suggested to Moore in 1820, of starting a weekly news- 
paper with a revolutionary title, such as ' I Carbonari.' In Shelley's 
society this plan took a new shape. It was proposed to get Leigh 
Hunt for an editor. In 1813 Byron had visited Hunt when im- 
prisoned for a libel on the prince regent. Hunt had taken Byron's 
part in the 'Examiner' in 1816, and had dedicated to him the 
'Story of Rimini.' Shelley and Byron now agreed (in spite of 
Moore's remonstrances against association with ill-bred cockneys) 
to bring Leigh Hunt to Italy. They assumed that Hunt would 
retain his connection with the 'Examiner,' of which his brother 
John was proprietor (see Trelawny, ii. 53). Hunt threw up this 
position without their knowledge, and started for Italy with his 
wife and six children. Shelley explained to Hunt (26 Aug. 182 1) 
that he was himself to be 'only a sort of link,' neither partner nor 
sharer in the profits. He sent 150/., to which Byron, taking 



538 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

Shelley's security, added 200/. to pay Hunt's expenses. Hunt re- 
proaches Byron as being moved solely by an expectation of large 
profits (not in itself an immoral motive). The desire to have an 
organ under his own command, with all consequent advantages, 
is easily intelligible. When Hunt landed at Leghorn at the end 
of June 1822, Byron and Shelley found themselves saddled with 
the whole Hunt family, to be supported by the hypothetical profits 
of the new journal, while Hunt asserted and acted upon the doctrine 
that he was under no disgrace in accepting money obligations. 
Hunt took up his abode on the ground-floor of the palace. His 
children, says Trelawny, were untamed, while Hunt considers 
that they behaved admirably and were in danger of corruption 
from Byron. Trelawny describes Byron as disgusted at the very 
start and declaring that the journal would be an 'abortion.' His 
reception of Mrs. Hunt, according to Williams, was 'shameful.' 
Mrs. Hunt naturally retorted the dislike, and Hunt reported one 
of her sharp sayings to Byron, in order, as he says, to mortify him. 
No men could be less congenial. Byron's aristocratic loftiness en- 
countered a temper forward to take offence at any presumption 
of inequality. Byron had provided Hunt with lodgings, furnished 
them decently, and doled out to him about 100/. through his steward, 
a proceeding which irritated Hunt, who loved a cheerful giver. 
Shelley's death (8 July) left the two men face to face in this un- 
comfortable relation. 

The 'Liberal,' so named by Byron, survived through four num- 
bers. It made a moderate profit, which Byron abandoned to 
Hunt (Hunt, i. 87, ii. 412), but he was disgusted from the outset, 
and put no heart into the experiment. He told his friends, and 
probably persuaded himself, that he had engaged in the journal 
out of kindness to the Hunts, and to help a friend of Shelley's; 
and takes credit for feeling that he could not turn the Hunts into 
the street. His chief contributions, the 'Vision of Judgment' 
and the letter 'To my Grandmother's Review,' appeared in the 
first number, to the general scandal. 'Heaven and Earth' 
appeared in the second number, the 'Blues' in the third, the 
' Morgante Maggiore ' in the fourth, and a few epigrams were added. 
Hunt and Hazlitt, who wrote five papers (Memoirs of Hazlitt, 
ii. 73), did most of the remainder, which, however, had clearly 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 



539 



not the seeds of life in it. The 'Vision of Judgment' was the 
hardest blow struck in a prolonged and bitter warfare. Byron 
had met Southey, indeed, at Holland House in 1813, and speaks 
favourably of him, calls his prose perfect, and professes to envy 
his personal beauty {Diary, 22 Nov. 1813). His belief that 
Southey had spread scandalous stories about the Swiss party in 
1 81 6 gave special edge to his revived antipathy. In 181 8 he dedi- 
cated 'Don Juan' to Southey in 'good simple savage verse' (Let- 
ter 322), bitterly taunting the poet as a venal renegade. In 1821 
Southey published his 'Vision of Judgment,' an apotheosis of 
George III, of grotesque (though most unintentional) profanity. 
In the preface he alludes to Byron as leader of the 'Satanic school.' 
Byron in return denounced Southey's 'calumnies' and 'cowardly 
ferocity.' Southey retorted in the 'Courier' (11 Jan. 1822), boast- 
ing that he had fastened Byron's name 'upon the gibbet for 
reproach and ignominy, so long as it shall endure.' Medwin 
(p. 179) describes Byron's fury on reading these courtesies. He 
instantly sent off a challenge in a letter (6 Feb. 1822) to Douglas 
Kinnaird, who had the sense to suppress it. His own 'Vision of 
Judgment,' written by i Oct. 182 1, was already in the hands of 
'Murray, now troubled by ' Cain.' Byron now swore that it should 
be published, and it was finally transferred by Murray to Hunt. 
Byron meanwhile had been uprooted from Pisa. A silly squabble 
took place in the street (21 March 1822), in which Byron's servant 
stabbed an hussar (see depositions in Medwin). Byron spent 
some weeks in the summer at Monte Nero, near Leghorn (where 
he and Mme. Guiccioli sat to the American painter West), and 
returned to Pisa in July. About the same time the Gambas were 
ordered to leave Tuscan territory. Byron's stay at Pisa had been 
marked by the death of Allegra (20 April) and of Shelley (8 July). 
Details of the ghastly ceremony of burning the bodies of Williams 
and Shelley (15 and 16 Aug.) are given by Trelawny, with char- 
acteristic details of Byron's emotion and hysterical affectation 
of levity. Shelley, who exaggerated Byron's poetical merits (see 
his enthusiastic eulogy of the fifth canto of ' Don Juan ' on his visit 
to Pisa), was kept at a certain distance by his perception of Byron's 
baser qualities. Byron had always respected Shelley as a man 
of simple, lofty, and unworldly character, and as undeniably a 



540 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

gentleman by birth and breeding. Shelley, according to Trelawny 
(i. 80), was the only man to whom Byron talked seriously and con- 
fidentially. He told Moore that Shelley was 'the least selfish and 
the mildest of men/ and added to Murray that he was 'as perfect 
a gentleman as ever crossed a drawing-room' (Letters 482 and 506). 
He was, however, capable of believing and communicating to 
Hoppner scandalous stories about the Shelleys and Claire, and 
of meanly suppressing Mrs. Shelley's confutation of the story (see 
Mr. Froude in Nineteenth Century, August 1883; and Mr. 
Jeaffreson's reply in the Athenceum, i and 22 Sept. 1883). 

Trelawny had stimulated the nautical tastes of Byron and 
Shelley. Captain Roberts, a naval friend of his at Genoa, built 
an open boat for Shelley, and a schooner, called the Bolivar, for 
Byron. Trelawny manned her with five sailors and brought her 
round to Leghorn. Byron was annoyed by the cost ; knew noth- 
ing, says Trelawny, of the sea, and could never be induced to take 
a cruise in her. When Byron left Pisa, after a terrible hubbub 
of moving his household and his baggage, Trelawny sailed in the 
Bolivar, Byron's servants following in one felucca, the Hunts in 
another, Byron travelling by land. They met at Lerici. Byron 
with Trelawny swam out to the Bolivar, three miles, and back.* 
The effort cost him four days' illness. On his recovery he went 
to Genoa and settled in the Casa Salucci at Albaro ; the Gambas 
occupying part of the same house. Trelawny laid up the Bolivar, 
afterwards sold to Lord Blessington for four hundred guineas 
(Trelav^ny, i. 62), and early next year went off on a ramble to 
Rome. Lord and Lady Blessington, with Count d'Orsay, soon 
afterwards arrived at Genoa ; and Lady Blessington has recorded 
her conversations with Byron. His talk with her was chiefly senti- 
mental monologue about himself. Trelawny says that he was 
a spoilt child; the nickname 'Baby Byron' (given to him, says 
Hunt, i. 139, by Mrs. Leigh) 'fitted him to a T' (Trelawny, i. 
56). His waywardness, his strange incontinence of speech, his 
outbursts of passion, his sensitiveness to all that was said of him 
come out vividly in these reports. 

His health was clearly enfeebled. Residence in the swampy 
regions of Venice and Ravenna had increased his liability to 
malaria (see Letter 311). His restlessness and indecision grew 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 541 

upon him. His passion for Madame Guiccioli had never blinded 
him to its probable dangers for both. This experience had made 
him sceptical as to the durabihty of his passions; especially for 
a girl not yet of age, and of no marked force of intellect or char- 
acter. Hunt speaks of a growing coldness, which affected her 
spirits and which she injudiciously resented. Byron's language 
to Lady Blessington (Blessington, pp. 68 and 117) shows that 
the bonds were acknowledged but no longer cherished. He talked 
of returning to England, of settling in America, of buying a Greek 
island, of imitating Lady Hester Stanhope. He desired to restore 
his self-esteem, wounded by the failure of the ' Liberal.' He had 
long before (28 Feb. 181 7) told Moore that if he lived ten years 
longer he would yet do something, and declared that he did not 
think literature his vocation. He still hoped to show himself a man 
of action instead of a mere dreamer and dawdler. The Greek 
committee was formed in London in the spring of 1823, and Tre- 
lawny wrote to one of the members, Blaquiere, suggesting Byron's 
name. Blaquiere was soon visiting Greece for information, and 
called upon Byron in his way. The committee had unanimously 
elected him a member. Byron was flattered and accepted. His 
old interest in Greece increased his satisfaction at a proposal which 
fell in with his mood. He at once told the committee (12 May) 
that his first wish was to go to the Levant. Though the scheme 
gave Byron an aim and excited his imagination, he still hesitated, 
and with reason. Weak health and military inexperience were bad 
qualifications for the leader of a revolt. Captain Roberts con- 
veyed messages and counter messages from Byron to Trelawny 
for a time. At last (22 June 1823) Trelawny heard from Byron, 
who had engaged a 'collier-built tub' of 120 tons, called the Her- 
cules, for his expedition and summoned Trelawny's help. Byron 
had taken leave of the Blessingtons with farewell presents, fore- 
bodings, and a burst of tears. He took 10,000 crowns in specie, 
40,000 in bills, and a large supply of medicine ; Trelawny, young 
Gamba, Bruno, an 'unfledged medical student,' and several 
servants, including Fletcher. He had prepared three helmets 
with his crest, 'Crede Byron,' for Trelawny, Gamba, and himself; 
and afterwards begged from Trelawny a negro servant and a smart 
military jacket. They sailed from Genoa on Tuesday, 15 July; 



542 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

a gale forced them to return and repair damages. They stayed 
two days at Leghorn, and were joined by Mr. Hamilton Browne. 
Here, too, Byron received a copy of verses from Goethe, who had 
inserted a complimentary notice of Byron in the 'Kunst und 
Alterthum,' and to whom Byron had dedicated 'Werner.' By 
Browne's advice they sailed for Cephalonia, where Sir C. J. Napier 
was in command and known to sympathise with the Greeks. 
Trelawny says that he was never 'on shipboard with a better com- 
panion.' Byron's spirits revived at sea; he was full of fun and 
practical jokes; read Scott, Swift, Grimm, Rochefoucauld; 
chatted pleasantly, and talked of describing Stromboli in a fifth 
canto of 'Childe Harold.' On 2 Aug. they sighted Cephalonia. 
They found that Napier was away, and that Blaquiere had left 
for England. Byron began to fancy that he had been used as a 
decoy, and declared that he must see his way plainly before mov- 
ing. Napier soon returned, and the party was warmly received 
by the residents. Information from Greece was scarce and doubt- 
ful. Trelawny resolved to start with Browne, knowing, he says, 
that Byron, once on shore, would again become dawdling and 
shilly-shallying. Byron settled at a village called Metaxata, near 
Argostoli, and remained there till 27 Dec. 

Byron's nerve was evidently shaken. He showed a strange 
irritability and nervousness (Trelawny, ii. 116). He wished to 
hear of some agreement among the divided and factious Greek 
chiefs before trusting himself among them. The Cephalonian 
Greeks, according to Trelawny, favoured the election of a foreign 
king, and Trelawny thought that Byron was really impressed by 
the possibility of receiving a crown. Byron hinted to Parry 
afterwards of great offers which had been made to him. Fancies 
of this kind may have passed through his mind. Yet his general 
judgment of the situation was remarkable for its strong sense. 
His cynical tendencies at least kept him free from the enthusiasts' 
illusions, and did not damp his zeal. 

In Cephalonia Byron had some conversations upon religious 
topics with Dr. Kennedy, physician of the garrison. Kennedy 
reported them in a book, in which he unfortunately thought more 
of expounding his argument than of reporting Byron. Byron had, 
in fact, no settled views. His heterodoxy did not rest upon reason- 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 



543 



ing, but upon sentiment. He was curiously superstitious through 
life, and seems to have preferred Catholicism to other religions. 
Lady Byron told Crabb Robinson (5 March 1855) that Byron had 
been made miserable by the gloomy Calvinism from which, she 
said, he had never freed himself. Some passages in his letters, 
and the early ' Prayer to Nature ' — an imitation of Pope's ' Uni- 
versal Prayer ' — seem to imply a revolt from the doctrines to 
which Lady Byron referred. 'Cain,' his most serious utterance, 
clearly favours the view that the orthodox theology gave a repulsive 
or a nugatory answer to the great problems. But, in truth, Byron's 
scepticism was part of his quarrel with cant. He hated the re- 
ligious dogma as he hated the political creed and the social system 
of the respectable world. He disavowed sympathy with Shelley's 
opinions, and probably never gave a thought to the philosophy in 
which Shelley was interested. 

Trelawny was now with Odysseus and the chiefs of Eastern 
Greece. Prince Mavrocordato, the most prominent of the Western 
Greeks, had at last occupied Missolonghi. Byron sent Colonel 
Stanhope (afterwards Lord Harrington), a representative of the 
Greek committee, with a letter to Mavrocordato and another to 
the general government (2 Dec. and 30 Nov. 1823), insisting upon 
the necessity of union; and on 28 Dec. sailed himself, on the en- 
treaty of Mavrocordato and Stanhope. The voyage was hazard- 
ous. Gamba's ship was actually seized by a Turkish man-of- 
war, and he owed his release to the lucky accident that his captain 
had once saved the Turkish captain's life. Byron, in a 'mistico,' 
took shelter under some rocks called the Scrophes. Thence, with 
some gunboats sent to their aid, they reached Missolonghi, in 
spite of a gale, in which Byron showed great coolness. Byron was 
heartily welcomed. Mavrocordato was elected governor-general. 
Attempts were made to organise troops. Byron took into his pay 
a body of five hundred disorderly Suliotes. He met thickening 
difficulties with unexpected temper, firmness, and judgment. 
Demands for money came from all sides ; Byron told Parry that he 
had been asked for fifty thousand dollars in a day. He raised 
sums on his own credit, and urged the Greek committee to provide 
a loan. His indignation when Gamba spent too much upon some 
red cloth was a comic exhibition of his usual economy — hardly 



544 'S"/i? LESLIE STEPHEN 

unreasonable under the circumstances. His first object was an 
expedition against Lepanto, held, it was said, by a weak garrison 
ready to come over. At the end of January he was named com- 
mander-in-chief. His wild troops were utterly unprovided with 
the stores required for an assault. The Greek committee had sent 
two mountain guns, with ammunition, and some English artisans 
under William Parry, a 'rough burly fellow' (Trelawny, ii. 149), 
who had been a clerk at Woolwich. Parry after a long voyage 
reached Missolonghi on 5 Feb. 1824. In the book to which he gave 
his name, and for which he supplied materials, he professes to have 
received Byron's confidence. Byron called him 'old boy,' laughed 
at his sea slang, his ridiculous accounts of Bentham (one of the 
Greek committee), and played practical jokes upon him. Parry 
landed his stores, set his artisans to work, and gave himself military 
airs. The Suliotes became mutinous. They demanded com- 
missions, says Gamba, for 150 out of three or four hundred men. 
Byron, disgusted, threatened to discharge them all, and next day, 
15 Feb., they submitted. The same day Byron was seized with 
an alarming fit — the doctors disputed whether epileptic or apo- 
plectic ; but in any case so severe that Byron said he should have 
died in another minute. Half an hour later a false report was 
brought that the Suliotes were rising to seize the magazine. Next 
day, while Byron was still suffering from the disease and the leeches 
applied by the doctors, who could hardly stop the bleeding, a 
tumultuous mob of Suliotes broke into his room. Stanhope says 
that the courage with which he awed the mutineers was 'truly 
sublime.' On the 17th a Turkish brig came ashore, and was 
burned by the Turks after Byron had prepared an attack. On 
the 19th a quarrel arose between the Suliotes and the guards of 
the arsenal, and a Swedish officer, Sasse, was killed. The English 
artificers, alarmed at discovering that shooting was, as Byron says, 
a 'part of housekeeping' in these parts, insisted on leaving for 
peaceable regions. The Suliotes became intolerable, and were 
induced to leave the town on receiving a month's wages from 
Byron, and part of their arrears from government. All hopes of 
an expedition to Lepanto vanished. 

Parry had brought a printing-press, though he had not brought 
some greatly desired rockets. Stanhope, an ardent disciple of* 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 545 

Bentham's, Started a newspaper, and talked of Lancasterian schools, 
and other civilising apparatus, including a converted blacksmith 
with a cargo of tracts. Byron had many discussions with him. 
Stanhope produced Bentham's 'Springs of Action' as a new pub- 
lication, when Byron 'stamped with his lame foot,' and said that 
he did not require lessons upon that subject. Though Trelawny 
says that Stanhope's free press was of eminent service, Byron 
may be pardoned for thinking that the Greeks should be freed 
from the Turks first, and converted to Benthamism afterwards. 
He was annoyed by articles in the paper, which advocated revo- 
lutionary principles and a rising in Hungary, thinking that an 
alienation of the European powers would destroy the best chance 
of the Greeks {To Barf, 10 March 1824). He hoped, he said, 
that the writers' brigade would be ready before the soldiers' press. 
The discussions, however, were mutually respectful, and Byron 
ended a talk by saying to Stanhope, 'Give me that honest right 
hand,' and begging to be judged by his actions, not by his words. 
Other plans were now discussed. Stanhope left for Athens at 
the end of February. Odysseus, with whom was Trelawny, pro- 
posed a conference with Mavrocordato and Byron at Salona. 
Byron wrote agreeing to this proposal 19 March. He had de- 
clined to answer an offer of the general government to appoint 
him 'governor-general of Greece' until the meeting should be over. 
The prospects of the loan were now favourable. Byron was 
trying, with Parry's help, to fortify Missolonghi and get together 
some kind of force. His friends were beginning to be anxious 
about the effects of the place on his health. Barff offered him a 
country-house in Cephalonia. Byron replied that he felt bound 
to stay while he could. ' There is a stake worth millions such as I 
am.' Missolonghi, with its swamps, meanwhile, was a mere fever- 
trap. The mud, says Gamba, was so deep in the gateway that 
an unopposed enemy would have found entrance difficult. Byron's 
departure was hindered by excessive rains. He starved himself 
as usual. Moore says that he measured himself round the wrist 
and waist almost daily, and took a strong dose if he thought his 
size increasing. He rode out when he could with his body-guard 
of fifty or sixty Suliotes, but complained of frequent weakness and 
dizziness. Parry in vain commended his panacea, brandy. Tre- 

2 N 



546 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

lawny had started in April with a letter from Stanhope, entreating 
him to leave Missolonghi and not sacrifice his health, and perhaps 
his life, in that bog. 

Byron produced his last poem on the morning of his birthday, in 
which the hero is struggling to cast off the dandy with partial suc- 
cess. He had tried to set an example of generous treatment of 
an enemy by freeing some Turkish prisoners at Missolonghi. A 
lively little girl called Hato or Hatagee, who was amongst them, 
wished to stay with him, and he resolved to adopt her. A letter 
from Mrs. Leigh, found by Trelawny among his papers, contained 
a transcript from a letter of Lady Byron's to her with an account 
of Ada's health. An unfinished reply from Byron (23 Feb. 1824) 
asked whether Lady Byron would permit Hatagee to become 
a companion to Ada. Lady Byron, he adds, should be warned 
of Ada's resemblance to himself in his infancy, and he suggests 
that the epilepsy may be hereditary. He afterwards decided to 
send Hatagee for the time to Dr. Kennedy. On 9 April he re- 
ceived news of Mrs. Leigh's recovery from an illness and good 
accounts of Ada. On the same day he rode out with Gamba, was 
caught in the rain, insisted upon returning in an open boat, and was 
seized with a shivering fit. His predisposition to malaria, aided 
by his strange system of diet, had produced the result anticipated 
by Stanhope. He rode out next day, but the fever continued. 
The doctors had no idea beyond bleeding, to which he submitted 
with great reluctance, and Parry could only suggest brandy. The 
attendants were ignorant of each other's language, and seem to have 
lost their heads. On the i8th he was delirious. At intervals he 
was conscious and tried to say something to Fletcher about his 
sister, his wife, and daughter. A strong 'antispasmodic potion' 
was given to him in the evening. About six he said, 'Now I shall 
go to sleep,' and fell into a slumber which, after twenty-four hours, 
ended in death on the evening of 19 April. Trelawny arrived on 
the 24th or 25th, having heard of the death on his journey. He 
entered the room where the corpse was lying, and, sending Fletcher 
for a glass of water, uncovered the feet. On Fletcher's return he 
wrote upon paper, spread on the coffin, the servant's account of 
his master's last illness. 

Byron's body was sent home to England, and after lying in 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 547 

state for two days was buried at Hucknall Torkard (see Edin- 
burgh Review for April 187 1 for Hobhouse's account of the funeral). 
The funeral procession was accidentally met by Lady Caroline 
Lamb and her husband. She fainted on being made aware that 
it was Byron's. Her mind became more affected ; she was separated 
from her husband; and died 26 Jan. 1828, generously cared for 
by him to the last. (For Lady Caroline Lamb see Lady Morgan, 
Memoirs, i. 200-14; Annual Obituary ior 1828; Mr. Townshend 
Mayer in Temple Bar for June 1868; Lord Lytton, Memoirs, 
vol. i. ; Paul, Life of Godwin, vol. ii.) 

Lady Byron afterwards led a retired life. Her daughter Ada 
was married to the Earl of Lovelace 8 July 1835, and died 29 Nov. 
1852. She is said to have been a good mathematician. A por- 
trait of her is in Bentley's 'Miscellany' for 1853. Lady Byron 
settled ultimately at Brighton, where she became a warm admirer 
and friend of F. W. Robertson. She took an interest in the reli- 
gious questions of the day, and spent a large part of her income in 
charity. Miss Martineau (Biographical Sketches, 1868) speaks 
of her with warm respect, and some of her letters will be found in 
Crabb Robinson's diary. Others (see Howitt's letter in Daily 
News, 4 Sept. 1869) thought her pedantic and over strict. She 
died 16 May i860. Mme. Guiccioli returned to her husband; she 
married the Marquis de Boissy in 1851 and died at Florence in 
March 1873. 

The following appears to be a full list of original portraits of 
Byron (for fuller details see article by Mr. R. Edgcumbe and Mr. 
A. Graves in Notes and Queries, 6th series, vi. 422, 472, vii. 269). 
Names of proprietors added: i. Miniature by Kaye at the age of 
seven. 2. Full-length in oils by Sanders; engraved in standard 
edition of Moore's life (Lady Dorchester). 3. Miniature by same 
from the preceding (engraving destroyed at Byron's request). 
4. Half-length by Westall, 1814 (Lady Burdett-Coutts). 5. Half- 
length by T. Phillips, 18 14 (Mr. Murray) ; engraved by Agar, 
R. Graves, Lupton, Mote, Warren, Edwards, and C. Armstrong. 
6. Miniature by Holmes, 1815 (Mr. A. Morrison); engraved 
by R. Graves, Ryall, and H. Meyer. 7. Bust in marble by 
Thorwaldsen, 181 6 (Lady Dorchester) ; replicas at Milan and 
elsewhere. 8. Half-length by Harlowe, 181 7; engraved by 



548 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

H. Meyer, HoU, and Scriven. 9. Miniature by Prepiani, 181 7, and 
another by the same; given to Mrs. Leigh. 10. Miniature in 
water-colours of Byron in college robes by Gilchrist about 1807-8; 
at Newstead. 11. Half-length in Albanian dress by T. Phillips, 
R. A. (Lord Lovelace) ; replica in National Portrait Gallery ; 
engraved by Finden. 12. Pencil Sketch by G. Cattermole from 
memory (Mr. Toone). 13. Medallion by A. Stothard. 14. Bust 
by Bartolini, 1822 (Lord Malmesbury) ; lithographed by Fro- 
mentin. 15. Half-length by West (Mr. Horace Kent); engraved 
by C. Turner, Engleheart, and Robinson. 16. Three sketches 
by Count d'Orsay, 1823; one at South Kensington. 17. Statue 
by Thorwaldsen, finished 1834. This statue was ordered from 
Thorwaldsen in 1829 by Hobhouse in the name of a committee. 
Thorwaldsen produced it for 1,000/. It was refused by Dean 
Ireland for Westminster Abbey, and lay in the custom-house vaults 
till 1842, when it was again refused by Dean Tinton. In 1843 
Whewell, having just become master of Trinity, accepted it for the 
college, and it was placed in the library (Correspondence in Notes 
and Queries, 6th ser. iv. 421). 18. A silhouette cut in paper by 
Mrs. Leigh Hunt is prefixed to 'Byron and some of his Contem- 
poraries.' 

Byron's works appeared as follows: i. 'Hours of Idleness' 
(see above for a notice of first editions). 2. 'English Bards and 
Scotch Reviewers' (Cawthorne) (for full details of editions see 
Notes and Queries, 5th ser. vii. 145, 204, 296, 355). 3. 'Imitations 
and Translations, together with original poems never before pub- 
lished, collected by J. C. Hobhouse, Trinity College, Cambridge' 
(1809) (contains nine poems by Byron, reprinted in works, among 
'occasional pieces,' 1807-8 and 1808-10). 4. 'Childe Harold, a 
Romaunt,' 4to, 181 2 (an appendix of twenty poems, including those 
during his travels and those addressed to Thyrza). 5. 'The Curse 
of Minerva' (anonymous; privately printed in a thin quarto in 
1812 (Lowndes) ; at Philadelphia in 1815, 8vo; Paris (Galignani), 
i2mo, 1818; and imperfect copies in Hone's 'Domestic Poems' 
and in later collections). 6. 'The Waltz' (anonymous), 1813 
(again in Works, 1824). 7. 'The Giaour, a Fragment of a Turk- 
ish Tale,' 1813, 8vo. 8. 'The Bride of Abydos, a Turkish 
Tale,' 1813, 8vo. 9. 'The Corsair, a Tale,' 1814, 8vo (to this 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 549 

were added the lines, 'Weep, daughter of a royal line,' omitted 
in some copies; see Letters of 22 Jan. and 10 Feb. 1814). 10. 
'Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte' (anonymous), 8vo, 1814. 11. 
'Lara, a Tale,' 1814, 8vo (originally published with Rogers's 
'Jacqueline'). 12. 'Hebrew Melodies,' 181 5 (lines on Sir Peter 
Parker appended) ; also with music by Braham and Nathan in 
folio. 13. 'Siege of Corinth,' 1816, 8vo. 14. 'Parisina,' 1816, 
8vo (this and the last together in second edition, 181 6). 15. 
'Poems by Lord Byron' (Murray), 1816, 8vo ('When all around,' 
'Bright be the place of thy soul,' 'When we two parted,' 'There's 
not a joy,' 'There be none of beauty's daughters,' 'Fare thee well;' 
poems from the French and lines to Rogers). The original of 
'Bright be the place of thy soul,' by Lady Byron, corrected by Lord 
Byron, is in the Morrison MSS. 16. 'Poems on his Domestic 
Circumstances by Lord Byron,' Hone, 1816 (includes a 'Sketch,' 
and in later editions a ' Farewell to Malta ' and ' Curse of Minerva ' 
(mutilated); a twenty-third edition in 181 7. It also includes 
'O Shame to thee. Land of the Gaul,' and ' Mme. Lavalette,' 
which, with an 'Ode to St. Helena,' 'Farewell to England,' 'On 
his Daughter's Birthday,' and 'The Lily of France,' are disowned 
by Byron in letter to Murray 22 July 1816, but are reprinted in 
some later unauthorised editions. 17. 'Prisoner of Chillon, and 
other Poems,' 1816, 8vo (sonnet to Lake Leman, 'Though the day 
of my destiny's over,' 'Darkness,' ' Churchhill's Grave,' the 
'Dream,' the 'Incantation ' (from Manfred), 'Prometheus'). 
18. 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,' canto iii., 1816, 8vo. 19. 
'Monody on the Death of Sheridan' (anonymous), 1816, 8vo. 
20. 'Manfred, a Dramatic Poem,' 181 7, 8vo. 21. 'The Lament of 
Tasso,' 8vo, 181 7. 22. ' Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,' canto iv., 
1 81 8 (the Alhama ballad and sonnet from Vittorelh appended). 
23. 'Beppo, a Venetian Story' (anonymous in early editions), 1818, 
8vo. 24. 'Suppressed Poems' (Galignani), 181 8, 8vo ('English 
Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' 'Land of the Gaul,' 'Windsor 
Poetics, a Sketch'). 25. Three Poems not included in the works 
of Lord Byron (Effingham Wilson), 181 8, 8vo ('Lines to Lady 
J[ersey];' 'Enigma on H.,' often erroneously attributed to Byron, 
really by Miss Fanshawe; 'Curse of Minerva,' fragmentary). 
26. 'Mazeppa,' 1819 (fragment of the 'Vampire' novel appended). 



550 



SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 



27. 'Marino Faliero,' 1820. 28. 'The Prophecy of Dante,' 1821 
(with 'Marino Faliero'), 8vo. 29. ' Sardanapalus, a Tragedy;' 
' The Two Foscari, a Tragedy ; ' ' Cain, a Mystery ' (in one volume, 
8vo), 1 82 1. 30. 'Letter ... on the Rev. W. L. Bowles's Stric- 
tures on Pope,' 1821. 31. 'Werner, a Tragedy' (J. Hunt), 1822, 
8vo. 32. 'The Liberal' (J. Hunt), 1823, 8vo (No. I. 'Vision of 
Judgment,' 'Letter to the Editor of my Grandmother's Review,' 
'Epigrams on Castlereagh.' No. IL 'Heaven and Earth.' No. 
in. 'The Blues.' No. IV. 'Morgante Maggiore'). 33. 'The 
Age of Bronze' (anonymous) (J. Hunt), 1823, 8vo. 34. 'The 
Island' (J. Hunt), 1823, 8vo. 35. 'The Deformed Transformed' 
(J. & H. L. Hunt), 1824, 8vo. 36. 'Don Juan' (cantos i. and 
ii. 'printed by Thomas Davison,' 4to, 1819; cantos iii., iv., and v. 
(Davison), 8vo, 1821; cantos vi., vii., and viii. (for Hunt & 
Clarke), 8vo, 1823; cantos ix., x., and xi. (for John Hunt), 8vo, 
1823; cantos xii., xiii., and xiv. (John Hunt), 8vo, 1823; cantos 
XV. and xvi. (John & H. L. Hunt), 8vo, 1824), all anonymous. 
A 17th canto (1829) is not by Byron; and 'twenty suppressed 
stanzas' (1838) are also spurious. 

Murray published from i8i5toi8i7a collective edition of works 
up to those dates in eight volumes i2mo; other collective editions 
in five volumes 16 mo, 181 7 ; and an edition in eight volumes 16 mo, 
1818-20. In 1824 was published an 8vo volume by Knight & 
Lacy, called vol. v. of Lord Byron's works, including 'Hours of 
Idleness,' 'English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' the 'Waltz,' and 
various minor poems, several of the spurious poems mentioned 
under Hone's domestic pieces, and 'To Jessy,' a copy of which is 
in Egerton MS. 2332, assent to 'Literary Recreations.' In 1824 
and 1825 the Hunts also published two volumes uniform with 
the above and called vols. vi. and vii. of Lord Byron's works, 
including the poems (except 'Don Juan') published by them 
separately as above, and in 'The Liberal.' In 1828 Murray 
published an edition of the works in four volumes 12 mo. Uni- 
form with this were published two volumes by J. F. Dove, in- 
cluding ' Don Juan ' (the whole) and the various pieces in Knight 
& Lacy's volume, with 'Lines to Lady Caroline Lamb,' 'On my 
Thirty-sixth Birthday,' and the lines 'And wilt thou weep?' 
There are various French collections: in 1825 Baudry & Amyot 



THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON 55 1 

published an 8vo edition in seven volumes at Paris, with a life by 
J. W. Lake, including all the recognised poems, the letter to Bowles, 
and the parliamentary speeches (separately printed in London in 
1824). Galignani published one-volume 8vo editions in 1828 
(with life by Lake), in 1831 (same life abridged), and 1835 (with 
life by Henry Lytton Bulwer, M.P.). To the edition of 1828 were 
appended twenty-one 'attributed poems,' including 'Remember 
thee, remember thee,' the 'Triumph of the Whale' (by Charles 
Lamb, Crabb Robinson, Diary (1872), i. 175), and 'Remind me 
not, remind me not.' Most of these were omitted in the edition 
of 1 83 1, which included (now first printed) the 'Hints from 
Horace,' of which fragments are given in Moore's 'Life' (1830). 
The collected 'Life and Works' published by Murray (1832- 
5), 8vo, includes all the recognised poems, and adds to the fore- 
going works a few 'published for the first time' (including the second 
letter to Bowles, and the 'Observations on Observations'), and 
several poems which had appeared in other works: 'River that 
rollest,' &c., from Medwin (1824); 'Verses on his Thirty-sixth 
Birthday,' from Gamba (1824) ; 'And thou wert sad' and 'Could 
love for ever,' from Lady Blessington; 'I speak not, I wail not;' 
'In the valley of waters;' 'They say that hope is happiness,' 
from Nathan's 'Fugitive Pieces,' &c. (1829); 'To my son,' 
'Epistle to a friend,' 'My sister, my sweet sister,' 'Could I lament,' 
the 'Devil's Drive,' and many trifles from Moore's 'Life' (1830). 
This edition, which has been reprinted in the same form and in one 
volume royal 8vo, is the most convenient. 



THE LIFE OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 

RICHARD GARNETT 

[From the Dictionary of National Biography.] 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822), poet, was born at Field 
Place, Warnham, near Horsham, on 4 Aug. 1792, and was the 
eldest son of Timothv, afterwards Sir Timothv Shelley, bart., and 
of his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Pilfold. The family, 
an offshoot of the Shelleys of Michelgrove, had been transplanted 



552 RICHARD GARNETT 

for a time to America, in the person of Percy's great-grandfather 
Timothy, whose son Bysshe, returning at an early age, made the 
fortune of his house by two successive runaway matches, the first 
with Mary Catherine, daughter of the Rev. Theobald Michel! of 
Horsham. Percy's father (h. 1753) was the offspring of this 
marriage. Bysshe Shelley, who is described as handsome, enter- 
prising, and not over-scrupulous, dignified in appearance and 
manners, but addicted to inferior company, survived his grand- 
son's birth by twenty-two years. He was a warm supporter of the 
Duke of Norfolk's interest in the county, and, upon the brief 
return of the whigs to office in 18 16, was rewarded with a baronetcy, 
'the whim,' according to a local rhymer, 'of his son Tim.' 
Timothy Shelley's character is fairly given by Professor Dowden : 
'He had a better heart than his father, and not so clear a head. 
A kindly, pompous, capricious, well-meaning, ill-doing, wrong- 
headed man.' His letters evince singular confusion, both of 
thought and expression. The accounts of Shelley's mother are 
somewhat contradictory, except as regards the beauty which all 
her children derived from her, and the facility of composition which 
became the special inheritance of Percy. It is important to re- 
mark that the family was not, as sometimes assumed, tory, but 
pronouncedly whig, and that Shelley would grow up with an addic- 
tion to liberty in the abstract and with no special aversion to the 
revolution. 

Shelley received his first instruction from the Rev. Thomas 
Edwards of Horsham. At ten he was transferred to Sion House 
academy, Brentford, kept by the Rev. Dr. Greenlaw, a bad middle- 
class school, which nevertheless profoundly influenced him in 
two ways. The persecutions which the shy, sensitive boy under- 
went from his schoolfellows inspired him with the horror of op- 
pression and indomitable spirit of resistance which actuated his 
whole life; and the scientific instruction he received, though little 
more than a pretence in itself, awoke a passionate desire to pene- 
trate the secrets of nature. It may almost be said that science 
was to Shelley what abstract thought was to Coleridge, and that 
the main peculiarity of the genius of each resulted from the thirst 
for discovery becoming engrafted upon a temperament originally 
most unscientifically prone to the romantic and marvellous. 



THE LIFE OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 553 

Eton, whither Shelley went at the age of twelve, repeated the ex- 
perience of Sion House on a larger scale. Here, again, his torment 
was the persecution of his schoolfellows, and his consolation 
scientific research conducted agreeably to his own notions. He 
destroyed an old willow with a burning-glass, and, endeavouring 
to raise the devil, succeeded so far as to raise a tutor. Many other 
tales of his residence at Eton are probably legendary, but there is 
no doubt of the influence exerted upon him by the benevolent 
physician James Lind (1736^1817) [q.v.], whom he has celebrated 
as the hermit in 'The Revolt of Islam.' He was nicknamed 
'Mad Shelley,' or 'Shelley the Atheist,' and he was known 
among his schoolfellows for a habit of 'cursing his father and the 
king.' He was no inapt scholar, and his progress in the classics 
eventually made him acquainted with Pliny's 'Natural History,' 
the first two books of which exercised a strong influence upon his 
theological opinions. His literary instincts also awoke ; and while 
at Eton (at the age of sixteen) he not only wrote but published his 
romance of 'Zastrozzi,' a boy's crude imitation of Mrs. Radcliffe's 
style. Somewhat later he composed another romance in the same 
manner, 'St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian,' which was also published 
(in 1810); joined his cousin, Thomas Medwin [q.v.], in writing 
a poem on the 'Wandering Jew,' which found no publisher at 
the time, but eventually appeared in 'Eraser's Magazine;' and 
in conjunction, as is probable, either with his sister Elizabeth or 
with his cousin, Harriet Grove — to whom he was, or thought 
himself, attached — published in 18 10 'Original Poetry by Victor 
and Cazire,' which he withdrew on discovering that his coadjutor 
had cribbed wholesale from Matthew Gregory Lewis. A hundred 
copies are said to have been put into circulation, but not one has 
ever come to light. Another early poem, 'A Poetical View of 
the Existing State of Things,' published anonymously while he 
was at Oxford, has also disappeared. 

Shelley matriculated at University Coflege, Oxford, on 10 April 
1810, and commenced residence at the Michaelmas term follow- 
ing. Oxford might have been a happy residence for him had he 
not brought along with him not only the passion for research into 
whatever the university did not desire him to learn, and the panthe- 
ism, miscalled by himself and others atheism, which he had imbibed 



554 RICHARD GARNETT 

from Pliny, but also a spirit of aggressive propaganda. Of this he 
afterwards cured himself, but at the time it was certain to involve 
him in collision with authorities whom he had indeed no great 
reason to respect, but of whose real responsibility for his behaviour 
he took no proper account. This trait was no doubt encouraged 
by the intimacy he contracted with Thomas Jefferson Hogg [q.v.], 
a man of highly original character entirely dissimilar to his own, 
whose sketch of him during the Oxford period is the most vivid, 
and probably the most accurate, portrait of the youthful Shelley 
(cf. C. K. Sharpe, Letters, i. 37, 444). Hogg's sarcastic humour 
encouraged, if it did not prompt, Shelley to such dangerous freaks 
as composing and circulating, in conjunction with his friend, a 
pamphlet of burlesque verses gravely attributed to Margaret 
Nicholson [q.v.], a mad woman who had attempted to kill the king 
{Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, Oxford, 18 10); 
and afterwards submitting a printed syllabus of arguments, sup- 
posed to demonstrate 'The Necessity of Atheism,' to the bishops 
and heads of colleges. The authorities summoned Shelley before 
them on the morning of 25 March 181 1, and, upon his refusal to 
answer interrogatories, delivered to him a sentence of expulsion, 
which had been signed and sealed in anticipation. Hogg's 
generous protest brought a similar sentence upon himself. 

Shelley's expulsion was rather favourable than otherwise to the 
development of his genius, but involved him in the greatest mis- 
fortune of his life, his imprudent marriage. Excluded from home, 
he took rooms in London, at 15 Poland Street, and frequented the 
hospitals, with the idea of ultimately becoming a physician. 
While in town he renewed the slight acquaintance he had already 
formed with Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of an hotel-keeper 
retired from business, and a fellow pupil of Shelley's sisters at 
a school in Clapham. A schoolgirl verging on sixteen, she thought 
herself persecuted ; Shelley sympathised, and interfered sufficiently 
to give her some apparent claim upon him ; and when in July he 
retired to his cousin's country house at Cwm Elan in Radnorshire, 
letter after letter came from Harriet complaining of the oppres- 
sions she underwent, and threatening to commit suicide. Shelley 
hastened back to town, saw her, commiserated her appearance, 
and under the influence of compassion and embittered feeling at 



THE LIFE OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 555 

his own renunciation by Harriet Grove, who had rejected him 
before his expulsion from Oxford, committed the weakest action 
of his hfe in engaging to marry her. They fled northw^ard, and 
were wedded in Edinburgh on 28 Aug. 181 1. It seems unlikely 
that Harriet's father should have had any violent objection to his 
daughter marrying the eventual heir to a baronetcy; and it is 
no unreasonable conjecture that the transaction was, in fact, ar- 
ranged by Harriet's family. If so, however, Harriet was certainly 
an innocent tool. Pleasing in appearance, fairly well educated, 
good-mannered and good-humoured as she was, an ordinary man 
might have promised himself much happiness with her; and indeed, 
until the affection which she originally felt for Shelley had become 
indifference, the marriage might have passed for fortunate. His 
own feelings when it was contracted, and for some time afterwards, 
are portrayed in his letters to Miss Hitchener, a Sussex school- 
mistress, then the object of his ardent intellectual admiration. 

Shelley's varied adventures for the next three years are unim- 
portant in comparison with the phenomenon in the background, 
the silent growth of his mind. In the winter of 1811-1812 he 
lived chiefly at Keswick, where he met with the kindest reception 
from Southey, where he opened his momentous correspondence 
with Godwin, whose 'Political Justice' had deeply impressed 
him, and whence, in February, he departed on the most quixotic 
of his undertakings, an expedition to redress the wrongs of Ireland. 
He spoke at meetings, wrote 'An Address to the Irish People' 
(181 2) and 'Proposals for an Association for the Regeneration 
of Ireland,' and in April departed for Wales, leaving things as 
he had found them. About this time he adopted the vegetarian 
system of diet, to which he adhered with more or less constancy 
when in England, but seems to have generally discarded when 
abroad. He spent the early summer at his old haunt of Cw^m 
Elan, and by the end of June was settled at Lynmouth in North 
Devon, where he wrote his powerful remonstrance with Lord 
Ellenborough on the condemnation of Daniel Isaac Eaton for 
publishing the third part of Paine's 'Age of Reason' (Barnstaple, 
18 1 2, 8vo). He excited the attention of government by sending 
a revolutionary 'Declaration of Rights' [Dublin, 1812], and his 
poem 'The Devil's Walk' (a broadsheet, of which the only known 



556 RICHARD GARNETT 

copy is in the Public Record Office) to sea in boxes and bottles. 
Finding it advisable to disappear, he took refuge at Tanyrallt, 
a house near Tremadoc in North Wales, where his landlord, Mr. 
Madocks, M.P. for Boston, was constructing the embankment 
which, at a great sacrifice of natural picturesqueness, has redeemed 
from the sea the estuary of the Glaslyn. The work was battered 
by storms, and its financial situation was precarious. Shelley 
hurried up to London to raise money on its behalf, and there made 
the personal acquaintance of Godwin, who had previously come 
down to visit him at Lynmouth, and ^ found only that he was not 
to be found.' His residence at Tanyrallt was terminated by a 
mysterious occurrence in the following February, which he rep- 
resented as the attack of an assassin, but which was in all pro- 
bability an hallucination. He sought refuge in Ireland with his 
family, which had for some time included Harriet's elder sister 
Eliza, an addition pernicious to his domestic peace. Leaving her 
at Killarney 'with plenty of books but no money,' Shelley and 
Harriet travelled up to London, where on 28 June 18 13, their 
daughter lanthe (afterwards Mrs. Esdaile, d. 1876) was born. 
By the end of July they had taken a house at Bracknell in Berk- 
shire, near Windsor Forest. 'Queen Mab,' principally written, 
as would seem, in 181 2, was privately printed about this time 
('Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem,' London, 1813, 8vo), 
with notes that might very well have been spared, including 
'a vindication of natural diet' (the 'Vindication' was separately 
printed London, 18 13, 8vo, but is excessively rare). It remained 
unknown until a piratical reproduction of it in 182 1 (which Shelley 
vainly endeavoured to suppress by an injunction) excited attention, 
and it obtained a celebrity long denied to his maturer and more 
truly poetical writings. It is indeed admirably adapted to serve 
as a freethinking and socialistic gospel, being couched in a strain 
of rhetoric so exalted as to pass easily for poetry. Early in 18 14 
he published anonymously an ironical 'Refutation of Deism' 
in a dialogue (London, 8vo), perhaps the rarest of his writings; 
it was, however, reprinted in 1815 in the 'Theological Inquirer.' 
Shelley was now on the eve of the great crisis of his life, his separa- 
tion from Harriet. So late as September 1813 he speaks of their 
'close-woven happiness.' But radical incompatibility of tem- 



THE LIFE OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 557 

perament had already laid the foundation of an estrangement. 
Hogg, writing of January 1814, says: 'The good Harriet was now 
in full force, vigour, and effect; roseate as ever, at times perhaps 
rather too rosy. She had entirely relinquished her favourite 
practice of reading aloud . . . neither did she read much to her- 
self ; her studies, which had been so constant and exemplary, had 
dwindled away, and Bysshe had ceased to express any interest 
in them, and to urge her, as of old, to devote herself to the culti- 
vation of her mind. When I called upon her, she proposed a walk 
. . . the walk commonly conducted us to some fashionable bonnet- 
shop." These ominous details are followed by a pathetic letter 
from Shelley, dated 16 March, deploring the ruin of his domestic 
happiness and the desolation of his home, from which he has been 
absent for a month. In these circumstances it is preposterous to 
attribute the estrangement to Shelley's passion for Mary Godwin, 
whom, except perhaps casually as a girl, he had not even seen. 
Nor is there any reason to impugn Harriet's conjugal fidelity; 
her attachment had involuntarily decayed, and her tastes and 
habits had rendered Shelley's society uncongenial to her. None 
would afl&rm that the youth of twenty either exercised the patience 
or made the efforts which he ought to have done, yet he was far 
from acting with the precipitancy commonly attributed to him. 
He seems to have foreseen that a separation might ensue ; for on 
23 March Harriet, hitherto only united to him by a Scots ceremony, 
was remarried with the rites of the church of England, thus secur- 
ing her legal status in any event. But so late as May, some time 
after his meeting with Mary Godwin, he is found pleading in 
pathetic verse for the restoration of Harriet's affections; and his 
lines to Mary a month later, though betraying great agitation of 
mind, are not those of one who is or wishes to be an accepted lover. 
But matters were evidently tending this way, and the crisis was 
precipitated by Harriet's ill-judged step of leaving her home and 
retiring with her child to her father's house at Bath towards the 
end of June. She speedily saw her error, but it was too late. 
Shelley seems to have summoned her to town about 14 July, and 
after several interviews between them, partly relating no doubt 
to the 'deeds and settlements' mentioned in subsequent corre- 
spondence, he quitted England with Mary Godwin on 28 July. 



558 RICHARD GARNETT 

They took with them Jane Clairmont [q. v.], a daughter by her first 
marriage of Mary Godwin's stepmother, a most imprudent step 
and the source of many calumnies. 

The fugitives crossed the Channel in an open boat, hastened 
to Paris, and made their way through the eastern provinces of 
France, still black with the devastation of war, to Switzerland, 
where they hoped to find a permanent abode. On the way Shelley 
wrote to Harriet, proposing that she should join them, a project 
sufi&ciently repellent, but indicating that Shelley had parted with 
his wife on terms that, in his eyes at any rate, rendered friendly 
relations possible. Residence in Switzerland, however, soon 
proved impracticable for himself and Mary ; expected remittances 
failed to arrive, and they were only enabled to effect their return 
home by the cheapness of the Rhine water-carriage. Their ad- 
ventures were recorded in a little narrative (^ The History of a Six 
Weeks' Tour,' written and published in 1817) recently republished 
with a charming commentary, by Mr. Charles Isaac Elton (Lon- 
don, 1894, 8vo). The remainder of the year, during which Harriet 
gave birth to Charles Bysshe, a son by Shelley, was very trying. 
Shelleys, Godwins, and Westbrooks were all inimical, and every 
source of pecuniary supply was cut off but the post-obit. At the 
beginning of 18 15 Shelley's affairs took a favourable turn owing 
to the death of his grandfather. The new baronet, Sir Timothy, 
finding that his son could now encumber the estate, thought it 
best to come to terms with him. No real reconciliation was effected, 
but Shelley received 1,000/. a year, 200/. out of which he settled 
on Harriet. After a tour in the south of England, he took a house 
at Bishopgate, close by Windsor Forest. Consumption seemed 
to threaten for a time but passed away. The feeling thus en- 
gendered combined with the solemnity of the forest scenery to 
inspire 'Alastor,' the first poem in which he is truly himself, 
where the presentiment of impending dissolution and 'the desire 
of the moth for the star' are shadowed forth in an obscure but 
majestic allegory. It was published in 1816 ('Alastor, or the 
Spirit of Solitude,' London, 8vo), with some minor poems, also 
in a purely Shelleyan key. During the winter Shelley pursued the 
study of Greek literature in conjunction with his friends Hogg and 
Thomas Love Peacock [q. v.], who had been introduced to him by 



THE LIFE OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 559 

their common publisher Hookham. Both were excellent classical 
scholars, but Shelley alone of the three could assimilate the inner 
spirit of Greece, and these studies were most favourable to his 
development. At this time dawns the tranquillity of soul which, 
though sorely tried by storms from within and without, beamed 
more and more throughout the remainder of his life. Hence- 
forth he no longer aspired to enter personally into political agi- 
tation, and was content to work upon the world by his writings. 
About this time, too, was most probably written the beautiful if 
inconclusive 'Essay on Christianity,' first printed in 'Shelley 
Memorials' (1859), which shows so remarkable a progress from 
the prejudice and unreason of the notes to 'Queen Mab.' 

In May 18 16 this repose was interrupted by a hasty flight to 
the continent, precipitated in all probability by the unbearable 
annoyance of Godwin's affairs. Godwin's pecuniary embarrass- 
ments had led him to revise his opinion of Shelley's conduct. He 
importuned Shelley for money, which Shelley was for a time only 
too ready to supply; but patience failed at last, and, weary of 
perpetual contest, he withdrew from the scene with more expedi- 
tion than dignity. The influence of Jane, or, as she now called 
herself, Claire Clairmont, no doubt also contributed to their de- 
parture, although both Shelley and Mary were ignorant of the 
liaison with Bryon which made her anxious to join him in Switzer- 
land. Shelley now met Byron there for the first time, and little 
as their characters had in common, similarity of fortune and 
affinity of genius made them friends. ' The most gentle, the most 
amiable, and the least worldly-minded person I ever met,' said 
Byron afterwards. 'I have seen nothing like him, and never shall 
again, I am certain.' They travelled together, and Byron's 
poetry, to its great advantage, was deeply influenced by his new 
friendship. Shelley composed his 'Mont Blanc,' and Mary 
conceived and partly wrote her 'Frankenstein.' Returning to 
England in the autumn, they established themselves at Bath, prior 
to occupying the house which, probably at Peacock's recommenda- 
tion, they had taken at Great Marlow, where two stunning blows 
fell upon them. The melancholy death of Fanny Godwin, Mary's 
half-sister [see Godwin, William, the younger, and Godwin, 
Mrs. Mary Wollstonecraft], was succeeded by the dismal 



560 RICHARD GARNETT 

tragedy of Harriet Shelley. Learning that she had quitted her 
father's house, Shelley was having every search made for her, 
when, on 10 Dec. 1816, her body was taken from the Serpentine, 
where it had been for three or four weeks. She was apparently 
in an advanced state of pregnancy (cf. Times, 12 Dec. 1816; the 
verdict at the inquest on 'Harriet Smith' was 'Found drowned'). 
The circumstances immediately occasioning her death are too 
obscure to be investigated with profit. Shelley certainly had no 
share in them, but his relations with her were no doubt present to 
his mind when he afterwards spoke of himself as 'a prey to the 
reproaches of memory.' He hastened, nevertheless, to perform 
the obvious duty of giving his union with Mary a legal sanction 
(they were married on 30 Dec. at St. Mildred's, in the city of Lon- 
don), and next endeavoured to obtain his two children by Harriet 
(lanthe and Charles Bysshe) from her relatives. The case went 
before the court of chancery, and, by a memorable decision of Lord 
Eldon, on 27 March 181 7, was decided against Shelley. Early 
in this year (1817) appeared Shelley's 'Proposal for putting Re- 
form to the Vote throughout the Kingdom. By the Hermit of 
Marlow,' London, 8vo; and, under a like pseudonym, he issued 
in the same year 'An Address to the People on the Death of the 
Princess Charlotte' (London, 1843, ^^o; being a reprint of the 
lost edition of 18 17). 

A son, William, had been bom to Shelley and Mary Godwin in 
January 18 16, and September 181 7 saw the birth of a daughter, 
Clara. The household was further augmented by the company 
of Claire and her child Allegra, the fruit of her amour with Byron, 
which had ended in mutual disgust and bitter recrimination. 
Peacock was a near neighbour, but a closer friend was Leigh Hunt, 
whom Shelley had come to know upon his return from Switzerland, 
and whose delicate attentions had soothed the miseries of the pre- 
ceding winter. Shelley gave him 1,400/. to relieve his difficulties — 
a noble action, if it had not been performed at the expense of others 
who had juster claims upon him. He made the acquaintance of 
Keats through Leigh Hunt, but it did not become intimacy. 
Coleridge he never met, to the loss of both. Godwin renewed 
his importunities for pecuniary help, which, after a long display of 
patience and magnanimity on Shelley's part, ended in complete 



THE LIFE OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 56 1 

estrangement. Nothing gives a higher idea of the energy of 
Shelley's mind than that, amid all these troubles, the most ambi- 
tious of his poems should have been written within six months. 
'The Revolt of Islam' (London, 1818, 8vo) — originally called 
'Laon and Cythna' (a few copies were printed under this title 
in 181 7), and wisely altered before publication — may be described 
as a poet's impassioned vision of the French revolution and the 
succeeding reaction. Compared with the later 'Prometheus 
Unbound' it is the product of a mighty ferment, as the other 
poem is of the calm ensuing upon it. The music of its Spenserian 
stanza is unsurpassed in the language; and although the middle 
part is somew^hat tedious, Shelley never excelled the opening and 
the close — Cythna's education and bridal, the picture of the 
fallen tyrant, the tremendous scenes of pestilence and famine; 
above all, perhaps, the dedication to Mary. It was written partly 
on a high seat in Bisham Wood, partly as he glided or anchored 
in his boat amid the Thames islets and miniature waterfalls. Its 
publication occasioned a bitter attack in the 'Quarterly,' and 
drew enthusiastic praise from Professor Wilson, writing under 
the influence of De Quincey; but it was otherwise received with 
the indifference which, during Shelley's lifetime, the public, in- 
cluding his own friends, almost invariably manifested towards 
his works. 

When not writing 'The Revolt of Islam' Shelley was much 
engaged in relieving the distress of the cottagers in his neighbour- 
hood, and was publishing his political tracts under the signature of 
'The Hermit of Marlow.' By the beginning of 1818 he had be- 
come restless, and indeed the motives for emigration were weighty 
as well as numerous. Of one he did not think — the great benefit 
which his genius was destined to receive by transplantation to 
a land of romantic beauty and classical association. He left 
England on 11 March, and arrived at Turin on 31 March 1818. 
He remained in Italy till his death. 

The incidents of Shelley's life in Italy were mainly intellectual. 
After spending the spring of 18 18 at Como and Milan, and the 
summer at the baths of Lucca, where he translated Plato's ' Sym- 
posium,' and finished 'Rosalind and Helen' (commenced the 
year before at Marlow), he went to Venice on the unwelcome 
20 



562 RICHARD GARNETT 

errand of delivering Claire's daughter to her father, Byron. Here 
his own daughter Clara died of a disorder induced by the climate. 
Byron lent him a villa at Este, where he began 'Prometheus Un- 
bound,' and wrote the 'Lines on the Euganean Hills,' published, 
along with 'Rosalind and Helen' and a few other poems, in the 
following year. He also wrote about this time ' Julian and Mad- 
dalo,' inspired by his visits to Byron at Venice. Venice and 
Byron stand out vividly in the poem against a background of utter 
obscurity. In November he set out for Rome, and began upon the 
journey the series of descriptive letters to Peacock, which places 
him at the head of English epistolographers in this department. 
The masters of a splendid prose style rarely carry this into their 
familiar correspondence, but Shelley's prose writings and his letters 
are of a piece. December was spent at Naples, where painful 
circumstances imperfectly known produced the 'Lines written 
in Dejection,' the first great example of that marvel of melody 
and intensity, the characteristically Shelleyan lyric. Returning 
to Rome, he remained there until June 1819, when the death of 
his infant son William drove him to Leghorn, and subsequently 
to Florence, where his youngest son, afterwards Sir Percy Florence 
Shelley, was born in November. The greater part of 'Prome- 
theus Unbound' had been written at Rome, and immediately 
afterwards he turned to the tragedy of Beatrice Cenci, whose 
countenance, or reputed countenance, had fascinated him in 
Guido's portrait in the Colonna palace at Rome. Both pieces 
were published in the course of 1819-20 ('The Cenci: a Trag- 
edy in five Acts,' Leghorn, 1891, 8vo; 2nd edit. London, 1821, 
8vo; 'Prometheus Unbound, a lyrical drama in four acts, with 
other Poems,' London, 1820, 8vo). The 'Prometheus' is a 
dithyrambic of sublime exultation on the redemption of humanity, 
and an assemblage of all that language has of gorgeousness and 
verse of melody; the diction and passion of the 'Cenci' are 
toned down to their sombre theme, as different from the 'Pro- 
metheus' as the atrocity of its chief male character is from the 
transcendent heroism of the suffering demi-god. But both, the 
tragedy no less than the mythological drama, are effusions of 
lyrical emotion, and precisely correspond to the state of feeling 
which produced them. 



THE LIFE OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 563 

The 'Ode to the West Wind,' perhaps the grandest of Shelley's 
lyrics, was written at Florence in October 181 9, about which time 
he also produced 'Peter Bell the Third,' a parody of Words- 
worth, evincing more genuine if more discriminating admiration 
than many panegyrics. 'The Masque of Anarchy,' a poem 
provoked by the indignation at the -'Manchester massacre' of 
August 1819, was another composition of this period. It did not 
appear until 1832. 'Peter Bell the Third' remained in manu- 
script until 1839. At the close of 18 19 Shelley removed to Pisa, 
which was in the main his domicile for the rest of his life. He 
had become greatly interested in a project of his friends, the 
Gisbornes, for a steamboat between Genoa and Leghorn. The 
undertaking proved premature, but produced (July 1820) that 
incomparable union of high and familiar poetry, the 'Epistle to 
Maria Gisborne.' The year 1820 also produced the dazzling 
'Witch of Altas' and the humorous burlesque on Queen Caroline's 
trial, 'Swellfoot the Tyrant' ('(Edipus Tyrannus, or Swellfoot 
the Tyrant : a Tragedy in two Acts. Translated from the original 
Doric,' London, 1820, 8vo, written in August and published 
anonymously ; on the Society for the Suppression of Vice threaten- 
ing to prosecute, it was withdrawn, and only some seven copies of 
the original are known; reprinted, London, 1876, 8vo). But the 
year was chiefly remarkable for its lyrics, ranging from the ' Sensi- 
tive Plant' and the 'Skylark' down to the eight lines for which 
Landor, ever hyperbolical in praise and dispraise, would have 
bartered the whole of Beaumont and Fletcher. The year was 
uneventful until near its end, when Shelley made the acquaintance 
of the lovely Emilia Viviani, a young Italian lady who had been 
imprisoned in a convent with a view to extorting her consent to 
an obnoxious marriage. The first draft of his ' Epipsychidion ' 
existed some time before Shelley met Emilia, but his meeting with 
her supplied the needful impulse to perfect and complete that 
piece of radiant mysticism and rapturous melody (100 copies, 
London, 182 1, 8vo). It attests the growing influence of Plato 
whose 'Banquet' he had already translated. That influence is 
even more apparent in another composition of 1821, the 'Defence 
of Poetry,' written in answer to Peacock, almost contemporane- 
ously with 'Epipsychidion.' Two additional parts were contem- 



564 RICHARD GARNETT 

plated, but never written, and the essay remained in manuscript 
until the publication of Shelley's prose writings in 1840. Before 
long a further incentive to composition was supplied by the death 
of Keats, whose memory inspired 'Adonais' (Pisa, 182 1, 4to), 
not the most magnificent of Shelley's poems, but perhaps the one 
of most sustained magnificence. The concluding stanzas more 
fully than any other passage in his writings embody his ultimate 
speculative conclusions, substantially identical with Spinoza's, 
whose 'Tractatus' he began to translate about the same time. 
The chief external incident of the year (182 1) was Shelley's visit 
to Byron at Ravenna, for the sake of seeing Byron's and Claire 
Clairmont's daughter, the little Allegra, before Byron removed 
to Pisa. The relations between Byron and Claire, who now 
taught Lady Mountcashell's daughters in Florence, were a con- 
tinual source of friction. Shelley's conduct towards both parties 
was unexceptionable, and showed what progress he had made in 
calm judgment and self-control. Shelley had refused any further 
contributions to Godwin, but the latter's demands continued, and 
Shelley permitted Mary to send to her father the money she received 
for her new novel, 'Valperga.' 

Byron's residence at Pisa, with all its drawbacks, enlivened and 
diversified Shelley's life, which was further cheered by the society 
of the gentle and generous Edward Elliker Williams [q. v.] and of 
his wife Jane, the subject of Shelley's 'With a Guitar' and other 
exquisite lyrics. In the autumn of 182 1 the tidings of the Greek 
insurrection prompted his 'Hellas' (London, 1822, 8vo), an 
imitation in plan, though not in diction, of the 'Persae' of ^Eschy- 
lus, containing some of his noblest lyrical writing. The indifference 
of the public seems to have discouraged him from prolonged efforts 
to which he was not constrained, as he was in this instance, by 
some overmastering impulse. The tragedy on Charles I, which 
he began to write early in 1822, made little progress; but his 
powers as a translator appeared at their best in the scenes from 
'Faust' and Calderon's 'Magico Prodigioso' which he rendered 
somewhat later as the basis of papers for the 'Liberal.' His ap- 
pearance and conversation at this time are vividly described by 
Edward John Trelawny [q. v.], a new addition to the Pisan circle. 
In April the Shelleys and Williamses removed to Lerici, near 



THE LIFE OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 565 

Spezzia. The wild scenery and primitive people were most con- 
genial to Shelley, who declared himself ready to say with Faust 
to the passing hour, 'Verweile doch, du bist so schon.' While 
sailing, studying, listening to Mrs. Williams's music, and writing 
his ' Triumph of Life ' as his boat rocked in the moonlight, he heard 
of the Leigh Hunts' arrival at Pisa, and hastened to meet them. 
Having made them as comfortable as Byron's moodiness and Mrs. 
Hunt's apparently mortal sickness permitted, Shelley sailed for 
Spezzia from Leghorn on 8 July 1822, accompanied by Williams. 
Scarcely had they embarked when the face of sky and sea darkened 
ominously. Trelawny watched the little vessel sailing in the 
company of many others, and graphically describes how all were 
blotted from view by the squall, and how, when this had passed 
off, all reappeared except Shelley's, which was never seen again 
until months afterwards she was dredged up from the bottom of 
the sea. Some thought that she had been accidentally or de- 
signedly run down in the squall, but many circumstances militate 
against this theory. Shelley's body, best recognised by the volumes 
of Sophocles and Keats in the pockets, was cast ashore near Viareg- 
gio on 18 July, and, after having been buried for some time in the 
sand, was on 16 Aug., in the presence of Byron, Hunt, and Tre- 
lawny, cremated, to allow of the interment of the ashes in the prot- 
estant cemetery at Rome. This took place on 7 Dec. immediately 
under the pyramid of Caius Cestius. Leigh Hunt wrote the Latin 
epitaph, with the famous Cor Cordium, and Trelawny added three 
English lines from 'The Tempest.' The heart, which would 
not burn, and had been snatched from the flames by Trelawny, 
was given to Mary Shelley, and is in the keeping of her family (cf . 
GuiDO BiAGi, Gli ultimi giorni di P. B. Shelley, Florence, 1892). 
In 1823 there appeared 'Poetical Pieces,' containing 'Prome- 
theus Unmasked' {sic), 'Hellas,' 'The Cenci,' 'Rosalind and 
Helen,' with other poems. 'Julian and Maddalo' and 'The 
Witch of Atlas,' which had hitherto remained in manuscript, were 
published in 1824 along with the unfinished 'Triumph of Life,' 
the 'Epistle to Maria Gisborne,' a large number of minor lyrics, 
and translations, including those executed for the 'Liberal.' 
The title of the collection was 'Posthumous Poems' (London, 
8vo), and the expenses were guaranteed by two poets, B. W. 



566 RICHARD GARNETT 

Procter and T. L. Beddoes, and Beddoes's future biographer, 
T. Kelsall. It was almost immediately withdrawn in virtue of an 
arrangement with Sir Timothy Shelley, and for long the public 
demand continued to be supplied by pirated editions, the refusal 
of the courts to protect 'Queen Mab' being apparently taken 
as implying a license to appropriate anything. A pirated edition 
of 'Miscellaneous Poems' appeared in numbers during 1826 
(London, 12 mo). The consequent cheapness of circulation 
greatly extended Shelley's fame and influence, although it some- 
times brought his poems into singular company. In 1829 ad- 
mirers at Cambridge reprinted 'Adonais,' and undertook a fruit- 
less mission for the conversion of his own university. In 1829 
and 1834 very imperfect issues of his 'Poetical Works' appeared, 
the former along with those of Coleridge and Keats, and with a 
memoir by Cyrus Redding [q. v.]. In 1839, the obstacles to an 
authentic edition having been removed in some unexplained man- 
ner, Mrs. Shelley published what was then supposed to be a definitive 
edition in four volumes, enriched with biographical notes and some 
very beautiful lyrics which had remained in manuscript. An 
American edition of this, with a memoir by J. Russell Lowell, ap- 
peared at Boston in 1855, 3 vols. i2mo. A collection of his letters 
and miscellaneous prose writings followed in 1840. The letters, 
published in 1852 with a preface by Robert Browning, are mostly 
fabrications by a person claiming to be a natural son of Byron. 
Many most important additions, however, have been made to 
those published in 1840. In 1862 the present writer, as the result 
of an examination of Shelley's manuscripts, published a number of 
fragments in verse and prose, some of extreme interest, under the 
title 'Relics of Shelley.' These, as well as many of the new 
letters continually coming to light, have been incorporated into 
more recent editions of Shelley's writings. The only recent edition 
virtually complete is Mr. Buxton Forman's in eight volumes, con- 
taining both verse and prose (London, 1876-80, 8vo); but 
those of Mr. W. M. Rossetti (1870, 1878, and 1888) and of Mr. 
G. E. Woodberry (American, 1892, 1893) also deserve high con- 
sideration. Letters to Claire Clairmont and Miss Kitchener, and 
Harriet Shelley's letters to Miss Nugent, have been printed sepa- 
rately in limited editions. Translations into French, Italian, Ger- 



THE LIFE OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 567 

man, and Russian are becoming numerous. Selections have been 
issued by, among others, Mathilde Blind (with memoir, Tauchnitz, 
1872), the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke (1880), and bythe present writer 
(Parchment Library, 1880). The bulk of Shelley's manuscripts 
has been deposited by his daughter-in-law, Lady Shelley, in the 
Bodleian Library. 

Shelley's eldest son, Charles Bysshe, the offspring of his union 
with Harriet Westbrook, did not long survive him, and upon the 
death of Sir Timothy Shelley in 1844 the baronetcy passed to the 
poet's only surviving son by Mary Godwin, Sir Percy Florence 
Shelley (1819-1889). This most gentle and lovable man, the in- 
heritor of most of his father's fine qualities and of many of his 
tastes and accomplishments, died in December 1889. He married, 
22 June 1848, Jane, daughter of Thomas Gibson, and widow of 
the Hon. Charles Robert St. John, who survives him; but, the 
marriage having proved childless, the baronetcy devolved upon 
Edward, son of Shelley's younger brother John, and is now en- 
joyed by Sir Edward's brother Charles. 

The excessive vehemence which hurried Shelley into many hasty 
and unjustifiable steps, was, from a moral point of view, a serious 
infirmity, but failure to control impulse seems to have been a 
condition of his greatness and of his influence on mankind. He 
took Parnassus by storm. His poetical productiveness would 
have been admirable as the result of a long life ; as the work in 
the main of little more than five years, it is one of the greatest 
marvels in the history of the human mind. Had it been as unequal 
in matter as Dryden, in manner as Wordsworth, it would still have 
been wonderful ; but, apart from occasional obscurities in meaning 
and lapses in grammar, it is as perfect in form as in substance, and 
equable in merit to a degree unapproached by any of his contem- 
poraries. The lucidity and symmetry of the minor lyrics, in partic- 
ular, rival anything in antiquity, and surpass the best modern 
examples by their greater apparent spontaneity, the result in fact 
of the most strenuous revision. 

In 1835 Stuart Mill ably compared and contrasted him with 
Wordsworth; and the finest passage in his 'Pauline' (1833) is 
the outburst of Browning's passionate admiration. After many 
vicissitudes, opinion seems to be agreeing to recognise Shelley 



568 RICHARD GARNETT 

as the supreme lyrist, all of whose poems, whatever their outward 
form, should be viewed from the lyrical standpoint. This is a 
just judgment, for even the apparently austere and methodical 
' Cenci ' is as truly born of a passionate lyrical impulse as any of 
his songs. Despite his limitations, no modem poet, unless it be 
Wordsworth, has so deeply influenced English poetry. 

The splendour of his prose style, while exalting his character 
for imagination, has seemed incompatible with homely wisdom. 
In reality his essays and correspondence are not more distinguished 
by fine insight into high matters than by sound common-sense in 
ordinary things. No contemporary, perhaps, so habitually con- 
veys the impression of a man in advance of his time. His ca- 
pacity for calm discussion appears to advantage under the most 
provoking circumstances, as in his correspondence with Godwin, 
Booth, and Southey. As a critic, Shelley does not possess Cole- 
ridge's subtlety and penetration, but has a gift for the intuitive 
recognition of excellence which occasionally carries him too far in 
enthusiasm, but at all events insures him against the petty and self- 
interested jealousies from which none of his contemporaries, except 
Scott and Keats, can be considered exempt. This delight in the 
work of others, even more than his own poetical power, renders him 
matchless as a translator. Of his lyrics, those which have been 
most frequently set to music are: 'I arise from dreams of thee,' 
'The Cloud,' 'The fountains mingle with the river,' 'One word 
is too often profaned,' and 'Music when soft voices die.' 

Only two genuine portraits of Shelley are extant, and neither is 
satisfactory. The earlier, a miniature, was taken when he was 
only thirteen or fourteen, and is authenticated by its strong and 
undesigned resemblance to miniatures of the Pilfold family. The 
later portrait, painted by Miss Curran at Rome in 1819, was left 
in a flat and unfinished state. 'I was on the point of burning it 
before I left Italy,' the artist told Mrs. Shelley; 'I luckily saved 
it just as the fire was scorching.' There is a general agreement 
among the descriptions of personal acquaintance; all agree as to 
the slight but tall and sinewy frame, the abundant brown hair, 
the fair but somewhat tanned and freckled complexion, the dark 
blue eyes, with their habitual expression of rapt wonder, and the 
general appearance of extreme youth. Resemblances, by no 



THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS 569 

means merely fanciful, have been found with the portraits of No- 
valis, of Sir Robert Dudley, styled duke of Northumberland and 
earl of Warwick [q. v.], and of Antonio Leisman in the Florentine 
Ritratti de' Pittori. The preternatural keenness of his senses is 
well attested, and contributed to the illusions which play so large 
a part in his history. Of late years two splendid monuments have 
been erected to Shelley by the piety of his son and daughter-in-law; 
one is in Christchurch minster, Hampshire; the other, designed 
by Mr. Onslow Ford, R.A., is at University College, Oxford. 



THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS 

SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 
[From the Dictionary of National Biography."] 

Dickens, Charles (1812-1870), novelist, was born 7 Feb. 1812 
at 387 Mile End Terrace, Commercial Road, Landport, Portsea. 
His father, John Dickens, a clerk in the navy pay office, with a 
salary of 80/. a year, was then stationed in the Portsmouth dock- 
yard. The wife of the first Lord Houghton told Mr. Wemyss 
Reid that Mrs. Dickens, mother of John, was housekeeper at 
Crewe, and famous for her powers of story-telling (Wemyss Reid, 
in Daily News, 8 Oct. 1887). John Dickens had eight children 
by his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Barrow, a lieutenant 
in the navy. The eldest, Fanny, was born in 1810. Charles, 
the second, was christened Charles John Hufiam (erroneously 
entered Hufiham in the register), but dropped the last two names. 
Charles Dickens remembered the little garden of the house at 
Portsea, though his father was recalled to London when he was 
only two years old. In 1816 (probably) the family moved to 
Chatham. Dickens was small and sickly; he amused himself 
by reading and by watching the games of other boys. His mother 
taught him his letters, and he pored over a small collection of books 
belonging to his father. Among them were ' Tom Jones,' the 
'Vicar of Wakefield,' 'Don Quixote,' 'Gil Bias,' and especially 
Smollett's novels, by which he was deeply impressed. He wrote 
an infantine tragedy called 'Misnar,' founded on the 'Tales of the 



570 



SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 



Genii.' James Lamert, the stepson of his mother's eldest sister 
Mary (whose second husband was Dr. Lamert, an army surgeon 
at Chatham), had a taste for private theatricals. Lamert took 
Dickens to the theatre, in which the child greatly delighted. 
John Dickens's salary was raised to 200/. in 1819, and to 350/. in 
1820, at which amount it remained until he left the service, 9 
March 1825. It was, however, made insufl&cient by his careless 
habits, and in 182 1 he left his first house, 2 (now 11) Ordnance 
Terrace, for a smaller house, 18 St. Mary's Place, next to a baptist 
chapel. Dickens was then sent to school with the minister, Mr. 
Giles (see Langton, Childhood of Dickens) . In the winter of 
1822-3 his father was recalled to Somerset House, and settled 
in Bayham Street, Camden Town, whither his son followed 
in the spring. John Dickens, whose character is more or less 
represented by Micawber, was now in difficulties, and had to 
make a composition with his creditors. He was (as Dickens 
emphatically stated) a very affectionate father, and took a pride in 
his son's precocious talents. Yet at this time (according to the 
same statement) he was entirely forgetful to the son's claims to a 
decent education. In spite of the family difficulties, the eldest 
child, Fanny, was sent as a pupil to the Royal Academy of Music, 
but Charles was left to black his father's boots, look after the 
younger children, and do small errands. Lamert made a little 
theatre for the child's amusement. His mother's elder brother, 
Thomas Barrow, and a godfather took notice of him occasionally. 
The uncle lodged in the upper floor of a house in which a book- 
selling business was carried on, and the proprietress lent the child 
some books. His literary tastes were kept alive, and he tried his 
hand at writing a description of the uncle's barber. His mother 
now made an attempt to retrieve the family fortunes by taking a 
house, 4 Gower Street North, where a brass plate announced 
'Mrs. Dickens's establishment,' but failed to attract any pupils. 
The father was at last arrested and carried to the Marshalsea, 
long afterwards described in 'Little Dorrit.' (Mr. Langton 
thinks that the prison was the king's bench, where, as he says, 
there was a prisoner named Dorrett in 1824.) All the books and 
furniture went gradually to the pawnbroker's. James Lamert 
had become manager of a blacking warehouse, and obtained a 



THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS 571 

place for Dickens at 6s. or 7^. a week in the office at Hungerford 
Stairs. Dickens was treated as a mere drudge, and employed in 
making up parcels. He came home at night to the dismantled 
house in Gower Street till the family followed the father to the 
Marshalsea, and then lodged in Camden Town with a reduced old 
lady, a Mrs. Roylance, the original of Mrs. Pipchin in 'Dombey 
and Son.' Another lodging was found for him near the prison 
with a family which is represented by the Garlands in his ' Old 
Curiosity Shop.' The Dickenses were rather better off in prison 
than they had been previously. The maid-of-all-work who fol- 
lowed them from Bayham Street became the Marchioness of the 
'Old Curiosity Shop.' The elder Dickens at last took the 
benefit of the Insolvent Debtors Act, and moved first to Mrs. 
Roylance's house, and then to a house in Somers Town. Dickens's 
amazing faculty of observation is proved by the use made in his 
novels of all that he now saw, especially in the prison scenes of 
* Pickwick ' and in the earlier part of 'David Copperfield.' That 
he suffered acutely is proved by the singular bitterness shown in 
his own narrative printed by Forster. He felt himself degraded by 
his occupation. When his sister won a prize at the Royal Academy, 
he was deeply humiliated by the contrast of his own position, though 
incapable of envying her success. This was about April 1824. 

The family circumstances improved. The elder Dickens had 
received a legacy which helped to clear off his debts ; he had a pen- 
sion and after some time he obtained employment as reporter to the 
'Morning Chronicle.' About 1824 Dickens was sent to a school 
kept by a Mr. Jones in the Hampstead Road, and called the Well- 
ington House Academy. His health improved. His school- 
fellows remembered him as a handsome lad, overflowing with ani- 
mal spirits, writing stories, getting up little theatrical performances, 
and fond of harmless practical jokes, but not distinguishing him- 
self as a scholar. After two years at this school, Dickens went 
to another kept by a Mr. Dawson in Henrietta Street, Brunswick 
Square. He then became clerk in the office of Mr. Molloy in 
New Square, Lincoln's Inn, and soon afterwards (from May 1827 
to November 1828) clerk in the office of Mr. Edward Black more, 
attorney, of Gray's Inn. His salary with Mr. Blackmore rose from 
135. 6d. to 155. a week. Dickens's energy had only been stimulated 



572 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

by the hardships through which he had passed. He was determined 
to force his way upwards. He endeavoured to supplement his scanty 
education by reading at the British Museum, and he studied 
shorthand writing in the fashion described in 'David Copperfield.* 
Copperfield's youthful passion for Dora reflects a passion of the 
same kind in Dickens's own career, which, though hopeless, 
stimulated his ambition. He became remarkably expert in short- 
hand, and after two years' reporting in the Doctors' Commons and 
other courts, he entered the gallery of the House of Commons as re- 
porter to the 'True Sun.' He was spokesman for the reporters 
in a successful strike. For two sessions he reported for the ' Mirror 
of Parliament,' started by a maternal uncle, and in the session of 
1835 became reporter for the 'Morning Chronicle.' While still 
reporting at Doctors' Commons he had thoughts of becoming an 
actor. He made an application to George Bartley [q. v.], manager 
at Covent Garden, which seems to have only missed acceptance 
by an accident, and took great pains to practise the art. He finally 
abandoned this scheme on obtaining his appointment on the ' Morn- 
ing Chronicle' (Forster, ii. 179). His powers were rapidly devel- 
oped by the requirements of his occupation. He was, as he says 
(Letters, i. 438), 'the best and most rapid reporter ever known.' 
He had to hurry to and from country meetings, by coach and post- 
chaise, encountering all the adventures incident to travelling in the 
days before railroads, making arrangements for forwarding re- 
ports, and attracting the notice of his employers by his skill, re- 
source, and energy. John Black [q. v.], the editor, became a warm 
friend, and was, he says, his 'first hearty out-and-out appreciator.' 
He soon began to write in the periodicals. The appearance of 
his first article, 'A Dinner at Popular Walk' (reprinted as 'Mr. 
Minns and his Cousin'), in the 'Monthly Magazine' for Decem- 
ber 1833, filled him with exultation. Nine others followed till 
February 1835. The paper in August 1834 first bore the signature 
*Boz.' It was the pet name of his youngest brother, Augustus, 
called 'Moses,' after the boy in the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' which 
was corrupted into Boses and Boz. An 'Evening Chronicle,' 
as an appendix to the 'Morning Chronicle,' was started in 1835 
under the management of George Hogarth, formerly a friend of 
Scott. The 'Monthly Magazine' was unable to pay for the 



THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS 573 

sketches, and Dickens now offered to continue his sketches in the 
new venture. His offer was accepted, and his salary raised from 
five to seven guineas a week. In the spring of 1836 the collected 
papers were published as 'Sketches by Boz,' with illustrations 
by Cruikshank, the copyright being bought for 150/. by a pub- 
lisher named Macrone. On 2 April 1836 Dickens married Cath- 
erine, eldest daughter of Hogarth, his colleague on the 'Morning 
Chronicle.' He had just begun the 'Pickwick Papers.' The 
'Sketches,' in which it is now easy to see the indications of future 
success, had attracted some notice in their original form. Albany 
Fonblanque had warmly praised them, and publishers heard of the 
young writer. Messrs. Chapman & Hall, then beginning business, 
had published a book called 'The Squib Annual' in November 
1835, with illustrations by Seymour. Seymour was anxious to 
produce a series of 'cockney sporting plates.' Chapman & Hall 
thought that it might answer to publish such a series in monthly 
parts accompanied by letterpress. Hall applied to Dickens, 
suggesting the invention of a Nimrod Club, the members of which 
should get into comic difficulties suitable for Seymour's illustra- 
tions. Dickens, wishing for a freer hand, and having no special 
knowledge of sport, substituted the less restricted scheme of the 
Pickwick Club, and wrote the first number, for which Seymour 
drew the illustrations. The first two or three numbers excited less 
attention than the collected 'Sketches,' which had just appeared. 
Seymour killed himself before the appearance of the second num- 
ber. Robert William Buss [q. v.] illustrated the third number. 
Thackeray, then an unknown youth, applied to Dickens for the 
post of illustrator; but Dickens finally chose Hablot Knight 
Browne [q. v.], who illustrated the fourth and all the subsequent 
numbers, as well as many of the later novels. 

The success of 'Pickwick' soon became extraordinary. The 
binder prepared four hundred copies of the first number, and forty 
thousand of the fifteenth. The marked success began with the 
appearance of Sam Weller in the fifth number. Sam Weller is in 
fact the incarnation of the qualities to which the success was due. 
Educated like his creator in the streets of London, he is the ideal 
cockney. His exuberant animal spirits, humorous shrewdness, 
and kindliness under a mask of broad farce, madje him the favourite 



574 3^^ LESLIE STEPHEN 

of all cockneys in and out of London, and took the gravest readers 
by storm. All that Dickens had learnt in his rough initiation into 
life, with a power of observation unequalled in its way, was poured 
out with boundless vivacity and prodigality of invention. The 
book, beginning as farce, became admirable comedy, and has 
caused more hearty and harmless laughter than any book in the 
language. If Dickens's later works surpassed 'Pickwick' in 
some ways, 'Pickwick' shows, in their highest development, the 
qualities in which he most surpassed other writers. Sam Weller's 
peculiar trick of speech has been traced with probability to Samuel 
Vale, a popular comic actor, who in 1822 performed Simon Spat- 
terdash in a farce called 'The Boarding House,' and gave cur- 
rency to a similar phraseology {Notes and Queries, 6th ser. v. 
388 ; and Origin of Sam Weller, with a facsimile of a contemporary 
piratical imitation of 'Pickwick,' 1883). 

Dickens was now a prize for which publishers might contend. 
In the next few years he undertook a great deal of work, with con- 
fidence natural to a buoyant temperament, encouraged by unprec- 
edented success, and achieved new triumphs without permitting 
himself to fall into slovenly composition. Each new book was 
at least as carefully written as its predecessor. 'Pickwick' ap- 
peared from April 1836 to November 1837. 'Oliver Twist' 
began, while 'Pickwick' was still proceeding, in January 1837, 
and ran till March 1839. 'Nicholas Nickleby' overlapped 
'Oliver Twist,' beginning in April 1838 and ending in October 
1839. In February 1838 Dickens went to Yorkshire to look at the 
schools caricatured in Dotheboys Hall (for the original of Dothe- 
boys Hall see Notes and Queries, 4th ser. vi. 245, and 5th ser. iii. 
325). A short pause followed. Dickens had thought of a series 
of papers, more or less on the model of the old 'Spectator,' in 
which there was to be a club, including the Wellers, varied essays 
satirical and descriptive, and occasional stories. The essays were 
to appear weekly, and for the whole he finally selected the title 
'Master Humphrey's Clock.' The plan was carried out with 
modifications. It appeared at once that the stories were the pop- 
ular part of the series ; the club and the intercalated essay disap- 
peared, and ' Master Humphrey's Clock ' resolved itself into the 
two stories, 'The. Old Curiosity Shop' and 'Barnaby Rudge.' 



THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS 



SIS 



During 1840 and 1841 'Oliver Twist' seems to have been at first 
less popular than its f eUow-stories ; but 'Nicholas Nickleby' 
surpassed even 'Pickwick.' Sydney Smith on reading it con- 
fessed that Dickens had 'conquered him,' though he had 'stood 
out as long as he could.' 'Master Humphrey's Clock' began 
with a sale of seventy thousand copies, which declined when there 
was no indication of a continuous story, but afterwards revived. 
The 'Old Curiosity Shop,' as republished, made an extraordinary 
success. 'Barnaby Rudge' has apparently never been equally 
popular. 

The exuberant animal spirits, and the amazing fertility in creat- 
ing comic types, which made the fortune of 'Pickwick,' were now 
combined with a more continuous story. The ridicule of 'Bum- 
bledom' in 'Oliver Twist,' and of Yorkshire schools in 'Nicholas 
Nickleby,' showed the power of satirical portraiture already dis- 
played in the prison scenes of 'Pickwick.' The humorist is not 
yet lost in the satirist, and the extravagance of the caricature is 
justified by its irresistible fun. Dickens was also showing the 
command of the pathetic which fascinated the ordinary reader. 
The critic is apt to complain that Dickens kills his children as if 
he liked it, and makes his victims attitudinise before the foot- 
lights. Yet Landor, a severe critic, thought 'Little Nell' equal 
to any character in fiction, and Jeffrey, the despiser of sentimen- 
talism, declared that there had been nothing so good since Cordelia 
(FoRSTER, i. 177, 226). Dickens had written with sincere feeling, 
and with thoughts of Mary Hogarth, his wife's sister, whose death 
in 1837 had profoundly affected him, and forced him to suspend 
the publication of 'Pickwick' (no number was published in 
June 1837). When we take into account the command of the 
horrible shown by the murder in 'Oliver Twist,' and the unvary- 
ing vivacity and brilliance of style, the secret of Dickens's hold upon 
his readers is tolerably clear. 'Barnaby Rudge' is remarkable 
as an attempt at the historical novel, repeated only in his 'Tale 
of Two Cities ' ; but Dickens takes Httle pains to give genuine local 
colour, and appears to have regarded the eighteenth century chiefly 
as the reign of Jack Ketch. 

Dickens's fame had attracted acquaintances, many of whom 
were converted by his genial qualities into fast friends. In March 



57.6; SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

1837 he moved from the chambers in Furnival's Inn, which he had 
occupied for some time previous to his marriage, to 48 Doughty 
Street, and towards the end of 1839 he moved to a 'handsome 
house with a considerable garden' in Devonshire Terrace, facing 
York Gate, Regent's Park. He spent summer hoHdays at Broad- 
stairs, always a favourite watering-place, Twickenham, and Peters- 
ham, and in the summer of 1841 made an excursion in Scotland, 
received the freedom of Edinburgh, and was welcomed at a public 
dinner where Jeffrey took the chair and his health was proposed by 
Christopher North. He was at this time fond of long rides, and 
delighted in boyish games. His buoyant spirit and hearty good- 
nature made him a charming host and guest at social gatherings 
of all kinds except the formal. He speedily became known to 
most of his literary contemporaries, such as Landor (whom he 
visited at Bath in 1841), Talfourd, Procter, Douglas Jerrold, 
Harrison Ainsworth, Wilkie, and Edwin Landseer. His closest 
intimates were Macready, Maclise, Stanfield, and John Forster. 
Forster had seen him at the office of the 'True Son,' and had 
afterwards met him at the house of Harrison Ainsworth. They 
had become intimate at the time of Mary Hogarth's death, when 
Forster visited him, on his temporary retirement, at Hampstead. 
Forster, whom he afterwards chose as his biographer, was service- 
able both by reading his works before publication and by helping 
his business arrangements. 

Dickens made at starting some rash agreements. Chapman & 
Hall had given him 15/. 155. a number for 'Pickwick,' with ad- 
ditional payments dependent upon the sale. He received, Forster 
thinks, 2,500/. on the whole. He had also, with Chapman & Hall, 
rebought for 2,000/. in 1837 the copyright of the 'Sketches' sold 
to Macrone in 1831 for 150/. The success of 'Pickwick' had 
raised the value of the book, and Macrone proposed to reissue it 
simultaneously with 'Pickwick' and 'Oliver Twist.' Dickens 
thought that this superabundance would be injurious to his repu- 
tation, and naturally considered Macrone to be extortionate. 
When, however, Macrone died, two years later, Dickens edited the 
'Pic-Nic Papers' (1841) for the benefit of the widow, contributing 
the preface and a story, which was made out of his farce 'The 
LampHghter.' In November 1837 Chapman & Hall agreed that 



THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS 



577 



he should have a share after five years in the copyright of ' Pick- 
wick/ on condition that he should write a similar book, for which 
he was to receive 3,000/., besides having the whole copyright after 
five years. Upon the success of 'Nicholas Nickleby,' written 
in fulfilment of this agreement, the pubhshers paid him an addi- 
tional 1,500/. in consideration of a further agreement, carried out 
by 'Master Humphrey's Clock.' Dickens was to receive 50/. 
for each weekly number, and to have half the profits ; the copy- 
right to be equally shared after five years. He had meanwhile 
agreed with Richard Bentley (1794-1871) [q. v.] (22 Aug. 1836) 
to edit a new magazine from January 1837, to which he was to 
supply a story; and had further agreed to write two other stories 
for the same publisher. 'Oliver Twist' appeared in 'Bentley's 
Miscellany' in accordance with the first agreement, and, on the 
conclusion of the story, he handed over the editorship to Harrison 
Ainsworth. In September 1837, after some misunderstandings, 
it was agreed to abandon one of the novels promised to Bentley, 
Dickens undertaking to finish the other, 'Barnaby Rudge,' 
by November 1838. In June 1840 Dickens bought the copyright 
of 'Oliver Twist' from Bentley for 2,250/., and the agreement for 
'Barnaby Rudge' was cancelled. Dickens then sold 'Barnaby 
Rudge' to Chapman & Hall, receiving 3,000/. for the use of the 
copyright until six months after the publication of the last number. 
The close of this series of agreements freed him from conflicting 
and harassing responsibilities. 

The weekly appearance of 'Master Humphrey's Clock' had 
imposed a severe strain. He agreed in August 1841 to write a new 
novel in the 'Pickwick' form, for which he was to receive 200/. 
a month for twenty numbers, besides three-fourths of the profits. 
He stipulated, however, in order to secure the much-needed rest, 
that it should not begin until November 1842. During the pre- 
vious twelve months he was to receive 150/. a month, to be de- 
ducted from his share of the profits. When first planning 'Master 
Humphrey's Clock,' he had talked of visiting America to obtain 
materials for descriptive papers. The publication of the 'Old 
Curiosity Shop' had brought him a letter from Washington 
Irving; his fame had spread beyond the Atlantic, and he resolved 
to spend part of the interval before his next book in the United 

2P 



578 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

States. He had a severe illness in the autumn of 1841 ; he had to 
undergo a surgical operation, and was saddened by the sudden 
death of his wife's brother and mother. He sailed from Liverpool 
4 Jan. 1842. He reached Boston on 21 Jan. 1842, and travelled 
by New York and Philadelphia to Washington and Richmond. 
Returning to Baltimore, he started for the west, and went by Pitts- 
burg and Cincinnati to St. Louis. He returned to Cincinnati, 
and by the end of April was at the falls of Niagara. He spent a 
month in Canada, performing in some private theatricals at Mon- 
treal, and sailed for England about the end of May. The Ameri- 
cans received him with an enthusiasm which was at times over- 
powering, but which was soon mixed with less agreeable feehngs. 
Dickens had come prepared to advocate international copyright, 
though he emphatically denied, in answer to an article by James 
Spedding in the 'Edinburgh Review' for January 1843, that he 
had gone as a 'missionary' in that cause. His speeches on this 
subject met with httle response, and the general opinion was in 
favour of continuing to steal. As a staunch abohtionist he w^as 
shocked by the sight of slavery, and disgusted by the general desire 
in the free states to suppress any discussion of the dangerous topic. 
To the average Englishman the problem seemed a simple question 
of elementary morality. Dickens's judgment of America was in 
fact that of the average Englishman, whose radicalism increased his 
disappointment at the obvious weaknesses of the republic. He 
differed from ordinary observers only in the decisiveness of his 
utterances and in the astonishing vivacity of his impressions. 
The Americans were still provincial enough to fancy that the first 
impressions of a young novelist were really of importance. Their 
serious faults and the superficial roughness of the half-settled dis- 
tricts thoroughly disgusted him ; and though he strove hard to do 
justice to their good qualities, it is clear that he returned disillu- 
sioned and heartily dishking the country. The feeling is still 
shown in his antipathy to the northern states during the war 
(Letters, ii. 203, 240). In the 'American Notes,' published in 
October 1842, he wrote under constraint upon some topics, but 
gave careful accounts of the excellent institutions, which are the 
terror of the ordinary tourist in America. Four large editions were 
sold by the end of the year, and the book produced a good deal cf 



THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS 579 

resentment. When Macready visited America in the autumn of 
1843, Dickens refused to accompany him to Liverpool, thinking 
that the actor would be injured by any indications of friendship 
with the author of the 'Notes' and of 'Martin Chuzzlewit.' 
The first of the twenty monthly numbers of this novel appeared in 
January 1843. The book shows Dickens at his highest power. 
Whether it has done much to enforce its intended moral, that self- 
ishness is a bad thing, may be doubted. But the humour and the 
tragic power are undeniable. Pecksniff and Mrs. Gamp at once 
became recognised types of character, and the American scenes, 
revealing Dickens's real impressions, are perhaps the most sur- 
prising proof of his unequalled power of seizing characteristics at 
a glance. Yet for some reason the sale was comparatively small, 
never exceeding twenty-three thousand copies, as against the 
seventy-thousand of 'Master Humphrey's Clock.' 

After Dickens's return to England, his sister-in-law. Miss 
Georgina Hogarth, became, as she remained till his death, an in- 
mate of his household. He made an excursion to Cornwall in 
the autumn of 1842 with MacHse, Stanfield, and Forster, in the 
highest spirits, 'choking and gasping, and bursting the buckle 
off the back of his stock (with laughter) all the way.' He spent 
his summers chiefly at Broadstairs, and took a leading part in 
many social gatherings and dinners to his friends. He showed 
also a lively interest in benevolent enterprises, especially in ragged 
schools. In this and similar work he was often associated with 
Miss Coutts, afterwards Baroness Burdett-Coutts, and in later 
years he gave much time to the management of a house for fallen 
women established by her in Shepherd's Bush. He was always 
ready to throw himself heartily into any philanthropic movement, 
and rather slow to see any possibility of honest objection. His 
impatience of certain difliculties about the ragged schools raised 
by clergymen of the established church led him for a year or two 
to join the congregation of a unitarian minister, Mr. Edward 
Tagart. For the rest of his life his sympathies, we are told, were 
chiefly with the church of England, as the least sectarian of reli- 
gious bodies, and he seems to have held that every dissenting min- 
ister was a Stiggins. It is curious that the favourite author of the 
middle classes should have been so hostile to their favourite form 
of belief. 



580 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

The relatively small sale of ' Chuzzlewit ' led to difficulties with 
his publishers. The ' Christmas Carol' which appeared at Christ- 
mas 1843, was the first of five similar books which have been enor- 
mously popular, as none of his books give a more explicit state- 
ment of what he held to be the true gospel of the century. He 
was, however, greatly disappointed with the commercial results. 
Fifteen thousand copies were sold, and brought him only 726/., 
a result apparently due to the too costly form in which they were 
published. Dickens expressed a dissatisfaction, which resulted 
in a breach with Messrs. Chapman & Hall and an agreement 
with Messrs. Bradbury & Evans, who were to advance 2,800/. 
and have a fourth share of all his writings for the next eight years. 
Dickens's irritation under these worries stimulated his character- 
istic restlessness. He had many claims to satisfy. His family 
was rapidly increasing ; his fifth child was born at the beginning of 
1844. Demands from more distant relations were also frequent, 
and though he received what, for an author, was a very large income 
he thought that he had worked chiefly for the enrichment of others. 
He also felt the desire to obtain wider experience natural to one 
who had been drawing so freely upon his intellectual resources. 
He resolved, therefore, to economise and refresh his mind in Italy. 

Before starting he presided, in February 1844, at the meetings 
of the Mechanics' Institution in Liverpool and the Polytechnic in 
Birmingham. He wrote some radical articles in the 'Morning 
Chronicle.' After the usual farewell dinner at Greenwich, where 
J. M. W. Turner attended and Lord Normanby took the chair, 
he started for Italy, reaching Marseilles 14 July 1844. On 16 July 
he settled in a villa at Albaro, a suburb of Genoa, and set to work 
learning Italian. He afterwards moved to the Peschiere Palace 
in Genoa. There, though missing his long night walks in London 
streets, he wrote the 'Chimes,' and came back to London to read 
it to his friends. He started 6 Nov., travelled through Northern 
Italy, and reached London at the end of the month. He read the 
'Chimes' at Forster's house to Carlyle, Stanfield, Maclise, La- 
man Blanchard, Douglas Jerrold, Fox, Harness, and Dyce. He 
then returned to Genoa. In the middle of January he started 
with his wife on a journey to Rome, Naples, and Florence. He 
returned to Genoa for two months, and then crossed to St. Goth- 



THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS 581 

ard, and returned to England at the end of June 1845. C)n coming 
home he took up a scheme for a private theatrical performance, 
which had been started on the night of reading the 'Chimes.' 
He threw himself into this with his usual vigour. Jonson's 'Every 
Man in his Humour' was performed on 21 Sept. at Fanny Kelly's 
theatre in Dean Street. Dickens took the part of Bobadil, Forster 
appearing as Kitely, Jerrold as Master Stephen, and Leech as 
Master Matthew. The play succeeded to admiration, and a 
pubhc performance was afterwards given for a charity. Dickens 
is said by Forster to have been a very vivid and versatile rather than 
a finished actor, but an inimitable manager. His contributions 
to the ' Morning Chronicle ' seem to have suggested his next under- 
taking, the only one in which he can be said to have decidedly 
failed. He became first editor of the 'Daily News,' the first 
number of which appeared 21 Jan. 1846. He had not the neces- 
sary qualifications for the function of editor of a political organ. 
On 9 Feb. he resigned his post, to which Forster succeeded for a 
time. He continued to contribute for about three months longer, 
pubHshing a series of letters descriptive of his Itahan journeys. 
His most remarkable contribution was a series of letters on capital 
punishment. (For the fullest account of his editorship see Ward, 
pp. 68, 74.) He then gave up the connection, resolving to pass the 
next twelve months in Switzerland, and there to write another 
book on the old model. He left England on 3 1 May, having pre- 
viously made a rather singular overture to government for an ap- 
pointment to the paid magistracy of London, and having also 
taken a share in starting the General Theatrical Fund. He 
reached Lausanne 11 June 1846, and took a house called Rose- 
mont. Here he enjoyed the scenery and surrounded himself with 
a circle of friends, some of whom became his intimates through 
life. He specially liked the Swiss people. He now began 'Dom- 
bey,' and worked at it vigorously, though feeling occasionally 
his oddly characteristic craving for streets. The absence of 
streets 'worried' him 'in a most singular manner,' and he was 
harassed by having on hand both 'Dombey' and his next Christ- 
mas book, 'The Battle of Life.' For a partial remedy of the first 
evil he made a short stay at Geneva at the end of September. 
The 'Battle of Life' was at last completed, and he Vv-as cheered 



582 



SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 



by the success of the first numbers of 'Dombey.' In November 
he started for Paris, where he stayed for three months. He made 
a visit to London in December, when he arranged for a cheap issue 
of his writings, which began in the following year. He was finally 
brought back to England by an illness of his eldest son, then at 
King's College School. His house in Devonshire Terrace was still 
let to a tenant, and he did not return there until September 1847. 
'Dombey and Son' had a brilHant success. The first five num- 
bers, with the death, truly or falsely pathetic, of Paul Dombey, 
were among his most striking pieces of work, and the book has 
had great popularity, though it afterwards took him into the kind 
of social satire in which he was always least successful. For the 
first half-year he received nearly 3,000/., and henceforth his pe- 
cuniary affairs were prosperous and savings began. He found time 
during its completion for gratifying on a large scale his passion for 
theatrical performances. In 1847 a scheme was started for the 
benefit of Leigh Plunt. Dickens became manager of a company 
which performed Jonson's comedy at Manchester and Liverpool 
in July 1847, and added four hundred guineas to the benefit fund. 
In 1848 it was proposed to buy Shakespeare's house at Stratford- 
on-Avon and to endow a curatorship to be held by Sheridan 
Knowles. Though this part of the scheme dropped, the projected 
performances were given for Knowles's benefit. The 'Merry 
Wives of Windsor,' in which Dickens played Shallow, Lemon 
Falstaff, and Forster Master Ford, was performed at Manchester, 
Liverpool, Edinburgh, Birmingham, and Glasgow, the gross 
profits from nine nights being 2,551/. In November 1850 'Every 
Man in his Humour' was again performed at Knebworth, Lord 
Lytton's house. The scheme for a 'Guild of Literature and Art' 
was suggested at Knebworth. In aid of the funds, a comedy by 
Lytton, 'Not so bad as we seem,' and a farce by Dickens and 
Lemon, 'Mr. Nightingale's Diary,' were performed at the Duke 
of Devonshire's house in London (27 May 1851), when the queen 
and prince consort were present. Similar performances took 
place during 185 1 and 1852 at various towns, ending with Man- 
chester and Liverpool. A dinner, with Lytton in the chair, at 
Manchester had a great success, and the guild was supposed to be 
effectually started. It ultimately broke down, though Dickens and 



THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS 583 

Bulwer Lytlon were enthusiastic supporters. During this period 
Dickens had been exceedingly active. The 'Haunted Man or 
Ghostly Bargain,' the idea of which had occurred to him at 
Lausanne, was now written and pubHshed with great success at 
Christmas 1848. He then began 'David Copperfield,' in many 
respects the most satisfactory of his novels, and especially remark- 
able for the autobiographical element, which is conspicuous in so 
many successful fictions. It contains less of the purely farcical 
or of the satirical caricature than most of his novels, and shows 
his literary genius mellowed by age without loss of spontaneous 
vigour. It appeared monthly from May 1849 to November 1850. 
The sale did not exceed twenty-five thousand copies ; but the h)ook 
made its mark. He was now accepted by the largest class of 
readers as the undoubted leader among English novelists. While 
it was proceeding he finally gave shape to a plan long contemplated 
for a weekly journal. It was announced at the close of 1849, when 
Mr. W. H. Wills was selected as sub-editor, and continued to work 
with him until compelled to retire by ill-health in 1868. After 
many difficulties, the felicitous name, 'Household Words,' was 
at last selected, and the first number appeared 30 March 1849, 
with the beginning of a story by Mrs. Gaskell. During the rest 
of his life Dickens gave -much of his energy to this journal and its 
successor, 'All the Year Round.' He gathered many contribu- 
tors, several of whom became intimate friends. He spared no 
pains in his editorial duty; he frequently amended his contribu- 
tors' work and occasionally inserted passages of his own. He 
was singularly quick and generous in recognising and encouraging 
talent in hitherto unknown w^riters. Many of the best of his minor 
essays appeared in its pages. Dickens's new relation to his 
readers helped to extend the extraordinary popularity which con- 
tinued to increase during his life. On the other hand, the excessive 
strain which it involved soon began to tell seriously upon his 
strength. In 1848 he had been much grieved by the loss of his 
elder sister Fanny. On 31 March 185 1 his father, for whom in 
1839 he had taken a house in Exeter, died at Malvern. Dickens, 
after attending his father's death, returned to town and took the 
chair at the dinner of the General Theatrical Fund 14 April 185 1. 
After his speech he was told of the sudden death of his infant 



584 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

daughter, Dora Annie (born 16 Aug. 1850). Dickens left Devon- 
shire Terrace soon afterwards, and moved into Tavistock House, 
Tavistock Square. Here, in November 185 1, he began 'Bleak 
House,' which was published from March 1852 to September 
1853. It was followed by 'Hard Times,' which appeared in 
'Household Words' between i April and 12 Aug. 1854; and by 
'Little Dorrit,' which appeared in monthly numbers from Jan- 
uary 1856 to June 1857. Forster thinks that the first evidences 
of excessive strain appeared during the composition of 'Bleak 
House.' 'The spring,' says Dickens, 'does not seem to fly back 
again directly, as it always did when I put my own work aside and 
had nothing else to do.' The old buoyancy of spirit is decreasing; 
the humour is often forced and the mannerism more strongly 
marked; the satire against the court of chancery, the utilitarians, 
and the 'circumlocution office' is not reheved by the irresistible 
fun of the former caricatures, nor strengthened by additional 
insight. It is superficial without being good-humoured. Dickens 
never wrote carelessly ; he threw his whole energy into every task 
which he undertook ; and the undeniable vigour of his books, the 
infalhble instinct with which he gauged the taste of his readers, 
not less than his established reputation, gave him an increasing 
popularity. The sale of 'Bleak House I exceeded thirty thou- 
sand; 'Hard Times' doubled the circulation of 'Household 
Words;' and 'Little Dorrit' 'beat even "Bleak House" out of the 
field ; ' thirty-five thousand copies of the second number were sold. 
'Bleak House' contained sketches of Landor as Lawrence Boy- 
thorn, and of Leigh Hunt as Harold Skimpole. Dickens defended 
himself for the very unpleasant caricature of Hunt in 'All the 
Year Round,' after Hunt's death. While Hunt was still Hving, 
Dickens had tried to console him by explaining away the likeness 
as confined to the flattering part ; but it is impossible to deny that 
he gave serious ground of offence. During this period Dickens 
was showing signs of increasing restlessness. He sought relief 
from his labours at 'Bleak House' by spending three months at 
Dover in the autumn of 1852. In the beginning of 1853 he re- 
ceived a testimonial at Birmingham, and undertook in return to 
give a pubHc reading at Christmas on behalf of the New Midland 
Institute. He read two of his Christmas books and made a great 



THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS 585 

success. He was induced, after some hesitation, to repeat the 
experiment several times in the next few years. The summer 
of 1853 was spent at Boulogne, and in the autumn he made a two 
months' tour through Switzerland and Italy, with Mr. Wilkie Col- 
lins and Augustus Egg. In 1854 and 1856 he again spent sum- 
mers at Boulogne, gaining materials for some very pleasant de- 
scriptions; and from November 1855 to May 1856 he was at Paris, 
working at 'Little Dorrit.' During 1855 he found time to take 
part in some pohtical agitations. 

In March 1856 Dickens bought Gadshill Place. When a boy 
at Rochester he had conceived a childish aspiration to become its 
owner. On hearing that it was for sale in 1855, he began nego- 
tiations for its purchase. He bought it with a view to occasional 
occupation, intending to let it in the intervals; but he became 
attached to it, spent much money on improving it, and finally in 
i860 sold Tavistock House and made it his permanent abode. He 
continued to improve it till the end of his life. 

In the winter of 1856-7 Dickens amused himself with private 
theatricals at Tavistock House, and after the death of Douglas 
Jerrold (6 June 1857) got up a series of performances for the bene- 
fit of his friend's family, one of which was Mr. Wilkie Collins 's 
'Frozen Deep,' also performed at Tavistock House. For the 
same purpose he read the 'Christmas Carol' at St. Martin's 
Hall (30 June 1857), with a success which led him to carry out a 
plan, already conceived, of giving public readings on his own 
account. He afterwards made an excursion with Mr. Wilkie 
Collins in the north of England, partly described in 'A Lazy Tour 
of Two Idle Apprentices.' 

A growing resdessness and a craving for any form of distraction 
were connected with domestic unhappiness. In the beginning of 
1858 he was preparing his public readings. Some of his friends 
objected, but he decided to undertake them, partly, it would seem, 
from the desire to be fully occupied. He gave a reading, 15 April 
1858, for the benefit of the Children's Hospital in Great Ormond 
Street, in which he was keenly interested, and on 29 April gave the 
first public reading for his own benefit. This was immediately 
followed by the separation from his wife. The eldest son lived 
with the mother, while the rest of the children remained with 



586 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

Dickens. Carlyle, mentioning the newspaper reports upon this 
subject to Emerson, says: 'Fact of separation, I believe, is true, 
but all the rest is mere lies and nonsense. No crime and no mis- 
demeanor specifiable on either side ; ' unhappy together, these two, 
good many years past, and they at length end it' (Carlyle and 
Emerson, Correspondence, ii. 269). Dickens chose to publish a 
statement himself in 'Household Words,' 12 June 1858. He 
entrusted another and far more indiscreet letter to Mr. Arthur 
Smith, who now became the agent for his public readings, which 
was to be shown, if necessary, in his defence. It was published 
without his consent in the 'New York Tribune.' The impro- 
priety of both proceedings needs no comment. But nothing has 
been made public which would justify any statement as to the 
merits of the question. Dickens's publication in 'Household 
Words' and their refusal to publish the same account in ' Punch,' 
led to a quarrel with his publishers, which ended in his giving up the 
paper. He began an exactly similar paper, called 'All the Year 
Round' (first number 30 April 1859), and returned to his old 
publishers, Messrs. Chapman & Hall. Dickens seems to have 
thought that some public statement was made necessary by the 
quasi-public character which he now assumed. From this time 
his readings became an important part of his work. They 
formed four series, given in 1858-9, in 186 1-3, in 1866-7, and 
in 1868-70. They finally killed him, and it is impossible not 
to regret that he should have spent so much energy in an enter- 
prise not worthy of his best powers. He began with sixteen nights 
at St. Martin's Hall, from 29 April to 22 July 1858. A provincial 
tour of eighty-seven readings followed, including Ireland and Scot- 
land. He gave a series of readings in London in the beginning of 
1859, and made a provincial tour in October following. He was 
everywhere received with enthusiasm; he cleared 300/. a week 
before reaching Scotland, and in Scotland made 500/. a week. 
The readings were from the Christmas books, 'Pickwick,' 'Dom- 
bey,' 'Chuzzlewit,' and the Christmas numbers of 'Household 
Words.' The Christmas numbers in his periodicals, and espe- 
cially in 'All the Year Round,' had a larger circulation than any of 
his writings, those in 'All the Year Round' reaching three hun- 
dred thousand copies. Some of his most charming papers ap- 



THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS 587 

peared, as the ^Uncommercial Traveller,' in the last periodical. 
For his short story, 'Hunted Down,' first printed in the 'New 
York Ledger,' afterwards in 'All the Year Round,' he received 
1,000/. This and a similar sum, paid for the 'Holiday Romance' 
and 'George Silverman's Explanation' in a child's magazine 
published by Mr. Fields and in the 'Atlantic Monthly,' are 
mentioned by Forster as payments unequalled in the history of 
literature. 

In March 1861 he began a second series of readings in London, 
and after waiting to finish ' Great Expectations ' in ' All the Year 
Round,' he made another tour in the autumn and winter. He 
read again in St. James's Hall in the spring of 1862, and gave some 
readings at Paris in January 1863. The success was enormous, 
and he had an offer of 10,000/., 'afterwards raised,' for a visit to 
Australia. He hesitated for a time, but the plan was finally aban- 
doned, and America, which had been suggested, was closed by 
the civil war. For a time he returned to writing. The 'Tale 
of Two Cities' had appeared in 'All the Year Round' during his 
first series of readings (April to November 1859). ' Great Expec- 
tations' appeared in the same journal from December i860 to 
August 1 86 1, during the part of the second series. He now set 
to work upon 'Our Mutual Friend,' which came out in monthly 
numbers from May 1864 to November 1865. It succeeded with 
the public; over thirty thousand copies of the first number were 
sold at starting, and, though there was a drop in the sale of the 
second number, this circulation was much exceeded. The gloomy 
river scenes in this and in 'Great Expectations' show Dickens's 
full power, but both stories are too plainly marked by flagging 
invention and spirits. Forster publishes extracts from a book of 
memoranda kept frorn 1855 to 1865, in which Dickens first began 
to preserve notes for future work. He seems to have felt that he 
could no longer rely upon spontaneous suggestions of the moment. 

His mother died in September 1863, and his son Walter, for 
whom Miss Coutts had obtained a cadetship in the 26th native 
infantry, died at Calcutta on 31 Dec. following. 

He began a third series of readings under ominous symptoms. 
In February 1865 he had a severe illness. He ever afterwards 
suffered from a lameness in his left foot, which gave him great pain 



588 , SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

and puzzled his physicians. On 9 June 1865 he was in a terrible 
railway accident at Staplehurst. The carriage in which he 
travelled left the line, but did not, with others, fall over the via- 
duct. The shock to his nerves was great and permanent, and he 
exerted himself excessively to help the sufferers. The accident is 
vividly described in his letters (ii. 229-33). I^ spite of these in- 
juries he never spared himself; after sleepless nights he walked 
distances too great for his strength, and he now undertook a series 
of readings which involved greater labour than the previous series. 
He was anxious to make a provision for his large family, and, 
probably conscious that his strength would not long be equal to 
such performances, he resolved, as Forster says, to make the most 
money possible in the shortest time without regard to labour. 
Dickens was keenly affected by the sympathy of his audience, 
and the visible testimony to his extraordinary popularity and to his 
singular dramatic power was no doubt a powerful attraction to a 
man who was certainly not without vanity, and who had been a 
popular idol almost from boyhood. 

After finishing 'Our Mutual Friend,' he accepted (in February 
1866) an offer, from Messrs. Chappell of Bond Street, of 50/. a 
night for a series of thirty readings. The arrangements made 
it necessary that the hours not actually spent at the reading-desk 
or in bed should be chiefly passed in long railway journeys. He 
began in March and ended in June 1866. In August he made a 
new agreement for forty nights at 60/. a night, or 2,500/. for forty- 
two nights. These readings took place between January and 
May 1867. The success of the readings again surpassed all prec- 
edent, and brought many invitations from America. Objections 
made by W. H. Wills and Forster were overruled. Dickens said 
that he must go at once if he went at all, to avoid clashing with the 
presidential election of 1868. He thought that by going he could 
realise 'a sufficient fortune.' He 'did not want money,' but the 
'likelihood of making a very great addition to his capital in half 
a year' was an 'immense consideration.' In July Mr. Dolby 
sailed to America as his agent. An inflammation of the foot, 
followed by erysipelas, gave a warning which was not heeded. 
On I Oct. 1867 he telegraphed his acceptance of the engagement, 
and after a great farewell banquet at Freemasons' Hall (2 Nov.), 



THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS 589 

at which Lord Lytton presided, he sailed for Boston 9 Nov. 1867, 
landing on the 19th. 

Americans had lost some of their provincial sensibility, and were 
only anxious to show that old resentments were forgotten. Dick- 
ens first read in Boston on 2 Dec. ; thence he went to New York ; 
he read afterwards at Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, again 
at Philadelphia, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Springfield, Port- 
land, New Bedford, and finally at Boston and New York again. 
He received a public dinner at New York (18 April), and reached 
England in the first week of May 1868. He made nearly 20,000/. 
in America, but at a heavy cost in health. He was constantly 
on the verge of a break down. He naturally complimented Ameri- 
cans, not only for their generous hospitality, but for the many 
social improvements since his previous visits, though politically he 
saw little to admire. He promised that no future edition of his 
'Notes' or 'Chuzzlewit' should be issued without a mention of 
the improvements which had taken place in America, or in his state 
of mind. As a kind of thank-offering, he had a copy of the ' Old 
Curiosity Shop' printed in raised letters, and presented it to an 
American asylum for the blind. 

Unfortunately Dickens was induced upon his return to give a 
final series of readings in England. He was to receive 8,000/. 
for a hundred readings. They began in October 1868. Dickens 
had preferred as a novelty a reading of the murder in 'Oliver 
Twist.' He had thought of this as early as 1863, but it was 'so 
horrible' that he was then 'afraid to try it in public' {Letters, ii. 
200). The performance was regarded by Forster as in itself 
'illegitimate,' and Forster's protest led to a 'painful corre- 
spondence.' In any case, it involved an excitement and a degree 
of physical labour which told severely upon his declining strength. 
He was to give weekly readings in London alternately with read- 
ings in the country. In February 1869 he was forced to suspend 
his work under medical advice. After a few days' rest he began 
again, in spite of remonstrances from his friends and family. 
At last he broke down at Preston. On 23 April Sir Thomas 
Watson held a consultation with Mr. Beard, and found that he 
had been 'on the brinlv of an attack of paralysis of his left side, 
and possibly of apoplexy,' due to overwork, worry, and excite- 



590 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

ment. He was ordered to give up his readings, though after some 
improvement Sir Thomas consented to twelve readings without 
railway travelling, which Dickens was anxious to give as some 
compensation to Messrs. Chappell for their disappointment. In 
the same autumn he began 'Edwin Drood.' He was to receive 
7,500/. for twenty-five thousand copies, and fifty thousand were 
sold during his life. It 'very, very far outstripped every one 
of its predecessors' (J. T. Fields, p. 246). He passed the year 
at Gadshill, leaving it occasionally to attend a few meetings, and 
working at his book. His last readings were given at St. James's 
Hall from January to March. On i March he took a final 
leave of his hearers in a few graceful words. In April appeared 
the first number of 'Edwin Drood.' In the same month he 
appeared for the last time in public, taking the chair at the 
newsvendors' dinner, and replying for 'literature' at the dinner 
of the Royal Academy (30 April), when he spoke feelingly of 
the death of his old friend Maclise. He was at work upon his 
novel at Gadshill in June, and showed unusual fatigue. On 
8 June he was working in the 'chalet' which had been presented 
to him in 1859 by Fechter, and put up as a study in his garden. 
He came into the house about six o'clock, and, after a few 
words to his sister-in-law, fell to the ground. There was an 
effusion on the brain; he never spoke again, and died at ten 
minutes past six on 9 June 1870. He was buried with all possi- 
ble simplicity in Westminster Abbey 14 June following. 

Dickens had ten children by his wife: Charles, born 1837; 
Mary, born 1838; Kate, born 1839, afterwards married to Charles 
Allston Collins [q. v.], and now Mrs. Perugini; Walter Landor, 
born 1841, died 12 Dec. 1863 (see above); Francis Jeffrey, born 
1843; Alfred Tennyson, born 1845, settled in Australia; Sydney 
Smith Haldemand, born 1847, in the navy, buried at sea 2 May 
1867; Henry Fielding, born 1849; Dora Annie, born 1850, died 
14 April 1 851; and Edward Bulwer Lytton, born 1852, settled 
in Australia. 

Dickens's appearance is familiar by innumerable photographs. 
Among portraits may be mentioned (i) by Maclise in 1839 (en- 
graved as frontispiece to 'Nicholas Nickleby'), original in 
possession of Sir Alfred Jodrell of Bayfield, Norfolk; (2) pen- 




THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS 591 

cil drawing by Maclise in 1842 (with his wife and sister); 
(3) oil-painting by E. M. Ward in 1854 (in possession of Mrs. 
Ward) ; (4) oil-painting by Ary Scheffer in 1856 (in National 
Portrait Gallery) ; (5) oil-painting by W. P. Frith in 1859 (in 
Forster collection at South Kensington). Dickens was frequently 
compared in later life to a bronzed sea captain. In early portraits 
he has a dandified appearance, and was always a little over-dressed. 
He possessed a wiry frame, implying enormous nervous energy 
rather than muscular strength, and was most active in his habits, 
though not really robust. He seems to have overtaxed his strength 
by his passion for walking. All who knew him, from Carlyle 
downwards, speak of his many fine qualities: his generosity, 
sincerity, and kindliness. He was intensely fond of his children 
(see Mrs. Dickens's interesting account in Cornhill Magazine, 
January 1880) ; he loved dogs, and had a fancy for keeping large 
and eventually savage mastiffs and St. Bernards ; and he was kind 
even to contributors. His weaknesses are sufficiently obvious, 
and are reflected in his writings. If literary fame could be safely 
measured by popularity with the half-educated, Dickens must 
claim the highest position among English novelists. It is said, 
apparently on authority (Mr. Mowbray Morris in Fortnightly 
Review for December 1882) that 4,239,000 volumes of his works 
had been sold in England in the twelve years after his death. The 
criticism of more severe critics chiefly consists in the assertion 
that his merits are such as suit the half-educated. They admit 
his fun to be irresistible; his pathos, they say, though it shows 
boundless vivacity, implies little real depth or tenderness of feeling; 
and his amazing powers of observation were out of proportion to his 
powers of reflection. The social and political views, which he 
constantly inculcates, imply a deliberate preference of spontaneous 
instinct to genuine reasoned conviction; his style is clear, vigor- 
ous, and often felicitous, but mannered and more forcible than 
delicate ; he writes too clearly for readers who cannot take a joke 
till it has been well hammered into their heads; his vivid percep- 
tion of external oddities passes into something like hallucination; 
and in his later books the constant strain to produce effects only 
legitimate when spontaneous becomes painful. His books are 
therefore inimitable caricatures of contemporary ' humours* 



592 SIR LESLIE STEPHEN 

rather than the masterpieces of a great observer of human nature. 
The decision between these and more eulogistic opinions must be 
left to a future edition of this dictionary. 

Dickens's works are : i. ' Sketches by Boz, illustrative of Every- 
day Life and Everyday People/ 2 vols. 1835, 2nd series, i vol. 
December 1836, illustrated by Cruikshank (from the 'Monthly 
Magazine/ the 'Morning' and 'Evening Chronicle/ 'Bell's Life 
in London/ and the 'Library of Fiction'). 2. 'Sunday under 
Three Heads : as it is ; as Sabbath-bills would make it ; as it 
might be. By Timothy Sparks/ illustrated by H. K. Browne, 
June 1836. 3. 'The Strange Gentleman,' a comic burletta in two 
parts 1837 (produced 29 Sept. 1836 at the St. James's Theatre). 
4. 'The Village Coquettes,' a comic opera in two parts, December 
1836 (songs separately in 1837). 5. 'Is she his Wife? or Some- 
thing Singular;' a comic burletta acted at St. James's Theatre, 
6 March 1837, printed at Boston, 1877. 6. ' Posthumous Papers 
of the Pickwick Club,' November 1837 (originally in monthly num- 
bers from April 1836 to November 1837), illustrated by Seymour, 
Bass, and H. K. Browne. 7. 'Mudfog Papers,' in 'Bentley's 
Miscellany' (1837-9) ; reprinted in 1880. 8. ' Memoirs of Joseph 
Grimaldi; edited by Boz,' 2 vols. 1838. 9. ' Oliver Twist ; or the 
Parish Boy's Progress/ 2 vols. October 1838 (in 'Bentley's Mis- 
cellany,' January 1837 to March 1839), illustrated by Cruikshank. 
10. 'Sketches of Young Gentlemen,' illustrated by H. K. Browne, 
1838. II. 'Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nicklebly,' October 
1839 (in monthly numbers April 1838 to October 1839). 

12. 'Sketches of Young Couples, with an Urgent Remonstrance 
to the Gentlemen of England (being bachelors or widowers) at 
the present alarming Crisis,' 1840, illustrated by H. K. Browne. 

13. 'Master Humphrey's Clock,' in eighty-eight weekly numbers, 
from 4 April 1840 to 27 Nov. 1841, first volume published Septem- 
ber 1840; second volume published March 1841 ; third November 
1841 ; illustrated by George Cattermole and H. K. Browne ('Old 
Curiosity Shop' from vol. i. 37 to vol. ii. 223; 'Barnaby Rudge' 
from vol. ii. 229 to vol. iii. 420). 14. 'The Pic-Nic Papers,' by 
various hands, edited by Charles Dickens, who wrote the preface 
and the first story, 'The Lamplighter' (the farce on which the story 
was founded was printed in 1879), 3 ^^^^' ^^4^ (Dickens had noth- 



THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS 593 

ing to do with the third volume, Ze//e;'^,ii. 91). 15. 'American Notes 
for General Circulation,' 2 vols. 1842. 16. 'A Christmas Carol 
in Prose; being a Ghost Story of Christmas,' illustrated by Leech, 
1843. 17. 'The Life and x\dventures of Martin Chuzzlewit,' 
illustrated by H. K. Browne, July 1844 (originally in monthly 
numbers from January 1843 to July 1844). 18. 'Evenings of a 
Working Man,' by John Overs, with a preface relative to the 
author by Charles Dickens, 1844. 19. 'The Chimes; a Goblin 
Story of some Bells that Rang an Old Year out and a New Year 
in,' Christmas, 1844; illustrated by Maclise, Stanfield, R. Doyle, 
and J. Leech. 20. ' The Cricket on the Hearth ; a Fairy Tale of 
Home,' Christmas, 1845; illustrated by Maclise, Stanfield, C. 
Landseer, R. Doyle, and J. Leech. 21. 'Pictures from Italy,' 
1846 (originally in 'Daily News' from January to March 1846, 
where it appeared as a series of 'Travelling Letters written on 
the Road') 22. 'The Battle of Life; a Love Story,' Christmas, 
1846; illustrated by Maclise, Stanfield, R. Doyle, and J. Leech. 
23. 'Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son, Wholesale, 
Retail, and for Exportation,' April 1848; illustrated by H. K. 
Browne (originally in monthly numbers from October 1846 to 
to April 1848). 24. 'The Haunted Man, and the Ghost's 
Bargain; a Fancy for Christmas Time, Christmas,' 1848; illus- 
trated by Stanfield, John Tenniel, Frank Stone, and J. Leech. 
25. 'The Personal History of David Copperfield,' November 
1850; illustrated by H. K. Browne (originally in monthly parts 
from May 1849 to November 1850). 26. 'Bleak House,' Sep- 
tember 1853 5 illustrated by H. K. Browne (originally in monthly 
numbers from March 1852 to September 1853). 27. 'A Child's 
History of England,' 3 vols. 1854 (originally in 'Household Words' 
from 25 Jan. 185 1 to 10 Dec. 1853). 28. 'Hard Times for these 
Times,' August 1854 (originally in 'Household Words' from i 
April to 12 Aug. 1854). 29. 'Little Dorrit,' June 1857; illus- 
trated by H. K. Browne (originally in monthly numbers from 
December 1855 to June 1857). 30. 'A Tale of Two Cities,' 
November 1859; illustrated by H. K. Browne (originally in 'All 
the Year Round,' from 30 April to 26 Nov. 1859). 31. 'Great 
Expectations,' 3 vols. August 1861 ; illustrated (when published in 
one volume 1862) by Marcus Stone (originally in 'All the Year 

2Q 



594 •SII^ LESLIE STEPHEN 

Round' from i Dec. i860 to 3 Aug. 1861). 32. 'Our Mutual 
Friend,' November 1865 ; illustrated by Marcus Stone (originally 
in monthly numbers, May 1864 to November 1865). 33. 'Reli- 
gious Opinions of the late Rev. Chauncy Hare Townshend,' 
edited by Charles Dickens, 1869. 34. 'The Mystery of Edwin 
Drood' (unfinished); illustrated by S. L. Fildes (six numbers 
from April to September 1870). 

The following appeared in the Christmas numbers of 'House- 
hold Words' and 'All the Year Round:' 'A Christmas Tree,' in 
Christmas 'Household Words,' 1850; 'What Christmas is as we 
grow Older,' in 'What Christmas is,' ib. 185 1; 'The Poor Rela- 
tion's Story' and 'The Child's Story,' in 'Stories for Christmas,' 
ib. 1852; 'The Schoolboy's Story' and 'Nobody's Story,' in 
'Christmas Stories,' i6. 1853; 'In the Old City of Rochester,' 
'The Story of Richard Doubledick,' and 'The Road,' in 'The 
Seven Poor Travellers,' ib. 1854; 'Myself,' 'The Boots,' and 'The 
Till,' in ' The Holly Tree,' ib. 1855 ; ' The Wreck,' in ' The Wreck 
of the Golden Mary,' ib. 1856; 'The Island of Silver Store' and 
' The Rafts on the River,' in ' The Perils of certain English Pris- 
oners,' ib. 1857; 'Going into Society,' in 'A House to Let,' ib. 
1858; 'The Mortals in the House' and 'The Ghost in Master 
B.'s Room,' in 'The Haunted House,' 'All the Year Round,' 
1859: 'The Village' (nearly the whole), 'The Money,' and 'The 
Restitution,' in 'A Message from the Sea,' ib. i860; 'Picking up 
Soot and Cinders,' 'Picking up Miss Kimmeens,' and 'Picking up 
the Tinker,' in 'Tom Tiddler's Ground,' ib. 1861 ; 'His Leaving 
it till called for,' 'His Boots,' 'His Brown Paper Parcel,' and 'His 
Wonderful End,' in ' Somebody's Luggage,' ib. 1862 ; ' How Mrs. 
Lirriper carried on the Business,' and 'How the Parlour added a 
few Words,' in 'Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings,' ib. 1863; 'Mrs. Lir- 
riper relates how she went on and went over' and 'Mrs. Lirriper 
relates how Jemmy topped up,' in 'Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy,' ib. 
1864; 'To be Taken Immediately,' 'To be Taken for Life,' and 
'The Trial,' in 'Dr. Marigold's Prescriptions,' ib. 1865; 'Barbox 
Brothers,' 'Barbox Brothers & Co.' 'The Main Line,' the 'Boy 
at Mugby,' and 'No. i Branch Line: the Signalman,' in 'Mugby 
Junction,' ib. 1866; 'No Thoroughfare' (with Mr. Wilkie Collins), 
ib. 1867. 



THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS 595 

Besides these Dickens published the 'Lazy Tour of Two Idle 
Apprentices ' (with Mr. Wilkie ColHns) in ' Household Words ' for 
October 1857; 'Hunted Down' (originally in the 'New York 
Ledger') in 'All the Year Round/ August i860; 'The Uncom- 
mercial Traveller' (a series of papers from 28 Jan. to 13 Oct. i860, 
collected in December i860). Eleven fresh papers from the same 
were added to an edition in 1868, and seven more were written 
to 5 June 1869. A ' Holiday Romance/ originally in ' Our Young 
Folks/ and ' George Silverman's Explanation/ originally in the 
'Atlantic Monthly/ appeared in 'All the Year Round/ from 5 Jan. 
to 22 Feb. 1868. His last paper in 'All the Year Round' was 
'Landor's Life/ 5 June 1869. A list of various articles in news- 
papers, &c., is given in R. H. Shepherd's 'Bibliography.' 

The first collective edition of Dickens's works was begun in 
April 1847. The first series closed in September 1852; a second 
closed in 1861 ; and a third in 1874. The first library edition 
began in 1857. The ' Charles Dickens' edition began in America, 
and was issued in England from 1868 to 1870. ' Plays and Poems,' 
edited by R. H. Shepherd, was pubHshed in 1882, suppressed as 
containing copyright matter, and reissued without this in 1885. 
'Speeches' by the same in 1884. 

For minuter particulars see ' Hints to Collectors,' by J. F. Dexter, 
in ' Dickens Memento,' 1870 ; ' Hints to Collectors . . .' by C. P. 
Johnson, 1885; 'Bibliography of Dickens,' by R. H. Shepherd, 
1880; and 'Bibliography of the Writings of Charles Dickens/ 
by James Cook, 1879. 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

EDMUND GOSSE 
[From the Dictionary of National Biography.^ 

Browning, Robert (181 2-1889), poet, was descended, as he 
believed, from an Anglo-Saxon family which bore in Norman 
times the name De Bruni. As a matter of fact the stock has been 
traced no further back than to the early part of the eighteenth 
century, when the poet's natural great-grandfather owned the 



596 EDMUND GOSSE 

Woodgates inn in the parish of Partridge in Dorset. The son of 
this man, Robert Browning, was born in 1749, and was a clerk 
in the bank of England, rising to be principal of the bank stock 
ofi&ce. He married, in 1778, Margaret Tittle, a West Indian 
heiress. He died at Islington on 11 Dec. 1833. By his first wife 
he had two children, a son Robert, and a daughter who died un- 
married; by his second wife he had a large family. The second 
Robert Browning, who was born in 1781, was early sent out to 
manage the parental estate in St. Kitts, but threw up his appoint- 
ment from disgust at the system of slave labour prevailing there. 
In 1803 he became a clerk in the bank of England, and in 181 1 
settled in Camberwell, and married the daughter of a small 
shipowner in Dundee named Wiedemann, whose father was a 
Hamburg merchant. He was a fluent writer of accurate verse, 
in the eighteenth century manner, and of tastes both scholarly and 
artistic. He had wished to be trained as a painter, and it is said 
that he was wont in later life to soothe his little boy to sleep by 
humming odes of Anacreon to him. The poet, who had little 
sympathy for his grandfather, adored the memory of his father, 
and gave impressions of his genius, which were perhaps exag- 
gerated by affection. He was athletic and enjoyed magnificent 
health ; a ruddy, active man, of high intelligence and liberaHty of 
mind. He lived on until 1866, vigorous to the end. A letter 
from Frederick Locker Lampson preserves some interesting im- 
pressions of this fine old man. He had two children — Robert, 
the poet, and Sarianna, who still survives (born 1814). 

Robert Browning, one of the Englishmen of most indisputable 
genius whom the nineteenth century has produced, was born at 
Southampton Street, Camberwell, on 7 May 181 2. 'He was a 
handsome, vigorous, fearless child, and soon developed an unrest- 
ing activity and a fiery temper' (Mrs. Orr). He was keenly 
susceptible, from earliest infancy, to music, poetry, and painting. 
At two years and three months he painted (in lead-pencil and 
black-currant jam-juice) a composition of a cottage and rocks, 
which was thought a masterpiece. So turbulent was he and de- 
structive that he was sent, a mere infant, to the day-school of a 
dame, who has the credit of having divined his intellect. One of 
the first books which influenced him was Croxall's 'Fables' in 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 597 

verse, and he soon began to make rhymes, and a little later plays. 
From a very early age he began to devour the volumes in his father's 
well-stocked library, and about 1824 he had completed a little 
volume of verses, called 'Incondita,' for which he endeavoured in 
vain to find a publisher, and it was destroyed. It had been shown, 
however, to Miss Sarah Flower, afterwards Mrs. Adams, who made 
a copy of it ; this copy, fifty years afterwards, fell into the hands of 
Browning himself, who destroyed it. He told the present writer 
that these verses were servile imitations of Byron, who was at that 
time still alive; and that their only merit was their mellifluous 
smoothness. Of Miss Eliza Flower (elder sister of Sarah Flower), 
his earliest literary friend. Browning always spoke with deep emo- 
tion. Although she was nine years his senior, he regarded her 
with tender boyish sentiment, and she is believed to have inspired 
'Pauline.' In 1825, in his fourteenth year, a complete revolution 
was made in the boy's attitude to literature by his becoming ac- 
quainted with the poems of Shelley and Keats, which his mother 
bought for him in their original editions. He was at this time at the 
school of the ReVo Thomas Ready in Peckham. In 1826 the ques- 
tion of his education was seriously raised, and it was decided that 
he should be sent neither to a public school nor ultimately to a 
university. In later years the poet regretted this decision, which, 
however, was probably not unfavourable to his idiosyncrasy. He 
was taught at home by a tutor; his training was made to include 
' music, singing, dancing, riding, boxing, and fencing.' He became 
an adept at some of these, in particular a graceful and intrepid 
rider. From fourteen to sixteen he was inclined to believe that 
musical composition would be the art in which he might excel, and 
he wrote a number of settings for songs; these he afterwards de- 
stroyed. At his father's express wish, his education was definitely 
literary. In 1829-30, for a very short time, he attended the Greek 
class of Professor George Long at London University, afterwards 
University College, London. His aunt, Mrs. Silverthorne, greatly 
encouraged his father in giving a lettered character to Robert's 
training. He now formed the acquaintance of two young men 
of adventurous spirit, each destined to become distinguished. 
Of these one was (Sir) Joseph Arnould, and the other Alfred 
Domett; both then lived at Camberwell. Domett early in his 



598 EDMUND GOSSE 

career went out to New Zealand, in circumstances the suddenness 
and romance of which suggested to Browning his poem of 'War- 
ing.' To Domett also ' The Guardian Angel' is dedicated, and he 
remained through life a steadfast friend of the poet. While he was 
at University College, the elder Browning asked his son what he 
intended to be. The young man replied by asking if his sister 
would be sufficiently provided for if he adopted no business or 
profession. The answer was that she would be. The poet then 
suggested that it would be better for him 'to see life in the best 
sense, and cultivate the powers of his mind, than to shackle himself 
in the very outset of his career by a laborious training, foreign to 
that aim.' 'In short, Robert, your design is to be a poet?' He 
admitted it; and his father at once acquiesced. It has been said 
that the bar and painting occurred to him as possible professions. 
It may be so, but the statement just made was taken from his own 
lips, and doubtless represents the upshot of family discussion cul- 
minating in the determination to live a life of pure culture, out of 
which art might spontaneously rise. It began to rise immediately, 
in the form of colossal schemes for poems. In October 1832 
Robert was already engaged upon his first completed work, 
'Pauline.' Mrs. Silverthorne paid for it to be printed, and the 
little volume appeared, anonymously, in January 1833. The poet 
sent a copy to W. J. Fox, with a letter in which he described him- 
self as ' an oddish sort of boy, who had the honour of being intro- 
duced to you at Hackney some years back' by Sarah Flower 
Adams. Fox reviewed 'Pauline' with very great warmth in the 
'Monthly Repository,' and it fell also under the favourable notice 
of Allan Cunningham. J. S. Mill read and enthusiastically ad- 
mired it, but had no opportunity of giving it public praise. With 
these exceptions 'Pauline' fell absolutely still-born from the press. 
The life of Robert Browning during the next two years is very 
obscure. He was still occupied with certain religious speculations. 
In the winter of 1833-4, as the guest of Mr. Benckhausen, the 
Russian consul-general, he spent three months in St. Petersburg, 
an experience which had a vivid effect on the awakening of his 
poetic faculties. At St. Petersburg he wrote ' Porphyria's Lover ' 
and 'Johannes Agricola,' both of which were printed in the 
'Monthly Repository' in 1836. These are the earliest specimens 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 



599 



of Browning's dramatico-lyrical poetry which we possess, and their 
maturity of style is remarkable. A sonnet, 'Eyes calm beside 
thee,' is dated 17 Aug. 1834. In the early part of 1834 he paid 
his first visit to Italy, and saw Venice and Asolo. 'Having just 
returned from his first visit to Venice, he used to illustrate his 
glowing descriptions of its beauties, the palaces, the sunsets, the 
moonrises, by a most original kind of etching' on smoked note- 
paper (Mrs. Bridell-Fox). In the winter of 1834 he was ab- 
sorbed in the composition of 'Paracelsus,' which was completed 
in March 1835. Fox helped him to find a publisher, Effingham 
Wilson. 'Paracelsus' was dedicated to the Comte Amadee de 
Ripert-Monclar (&. 1808), a young French royalist, who had sug- 
gested the subject to Browning. 

John Forster, who had just come up to London, wrote a careful 
and enthusiastic review of 'Paracelsus' in the 'Examiner,' and 
this led to his friendship with Browning. The press in general 
took no notice of this poem, but curiosity began to awaken among 
lovers of poetry. 'Paracelsus' introduced Browning to Carlyle, 
Talfourd, Landor, Home, Monckton Milnes, Barry Cornwall, 
Mary Mitford, Leigh Hunt, and eventually to Wordsworth and 
Dickens. About 1835 the Browning family moved from Camber- 
well to Hatcham, to a much larger and more convenient house, 
where the picturesque domestic life of the poet was developed. 
In November W. J. Fox asked him to dinner to meet Macready, 
who was already prepared to admire 'Paracelsus;' he entered in 
his famous diary ' The writer can scarcely fail to be a leading spirit 
of his time.' Browning saw the new year, 1836, in at Macready's 
house in Elstree, and met Forster for the first time in the coach on 
the way thither. Macready urged him to write for the stage, and 
in February Browning proposed a tragedy of 'Narses.' This 
came to nothing, but after the supper to celebrate the success of 
Talfourd's 'Ion' (26 May 1836), Macready said, 'Write a play. 
Browning, and keep me from going to America. What do you 
say to a drama on Strafiford ? ' The play, however, was not com- 
pleted for nearly another year. On i May 1837 ' Strafford ' was pub- 
lished and produced at Covent Garden Theatre. It was played by 
Macready and Helen Faucit, but it only ran for five nights. Van- 
denhoff, who had played the part of Pym with great indifference, 



6oo EDMUND GOSSE 

cavalierly declined to act any more. For the next two or three 
years Browning lived very quietly at Hatch am, writing under the 
rose trees of the large garden, riding on 'York,' his horse, and 
steeping himself in all literature, modern and ancient, English and 
exotic. His labours gradually concentrated themselves on a long 
narrative poem, historical and philosophical, in which he re- 
counted the entire life of a mediaeval minstrel. He had become 
terrified at what he thought a tendency to diffuseness in his ex- 
pression, and consequently 'Sordello' is the most tightly com- 
pressed and abstrusely dark of all his writings. He was partly 
aware himself of its excessive density; the present writer ( in 
1875) saw him take up a copy of the first edition, and say, with 
a grimace, ' Ah ! the entirely unintelligible " Sordello." ' It was 
partly written in Italy, for which country Browning started at 
Easter, 1838. He went to Trieste in a merchant ship, to Venice, 
Asolo, the Euganean Hills, Padua, back to Venice; then by 
Verona and Salzburg to the Rhine, and so home. On the outward 
voyage he wrote ' How they brought the Good News from Ghent 
to Aix,' and many of his best lyrics belong to this summer of 
1838. In 1839 he finished 'Sordello' and began the tragedies 
'King Victor and King Charles' and 'Mansoor the Hierophant,' 
and formed the acquaintance of his father's old schoolfellow, 
John Kenyon. In 1840 he composed a tragedy of 'Hippolytus 
and Aricia,' of which all that has been preserved is the prologue 
spoken by Artemis. 

' Sordello' was published in 1840, and was received vdth mockery 
by the critics and with indifference by the public. Even those 
who had welcomed ' Paracelsus ' most warmly looked askance at 
this congeries of mystifications, as it seemed to them. Browning 
was not in the least discouraged, although, as Mrs. Orr has said, 
' he was now entering on a period of general neglect which covered 
nearly twenty years of his life.' The two tragedies were now com- 
pleted, the title of 'Mansoor' being changed to 'The Return of 
the Druses.' Edward Moxon proposed to Browning that he should 
print his poems as pamphlets, each to form a separate brochure 
of just one sheet, sixteen pages in double columns, the entire cost 
of each not to exceed twelve or fifteen pounds. In this fashion 
were produced the series of 'Bells and Pomegranates,' eight num- 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 6oi 

bers of which appeared successively between 1841 and 1846. Of 
the business relations between Browning and Moxon the poet gave 
the following relation in 1874, in a letter still unpubhshed, addressed 
to F. Locker Lampson : ' He [Moxon] printed, on nine occasions, 
nine poems of mine, wholly at my expense: that is, he printed 
them and, subtracting the very moderate returns, sent me in, duly, 
the bill of the remainder of expense. . . . Moxon was kind and 
civil, made no profit by me, I am sure, and never tried to help me 
to any, he would have assured you.' 

'Pippa Passes' opened the series of 'Bells and Pomegranates' 
in 1841 ; No. ii. was ' King Victor and King Charles,' 1842 ; No. iii. 
'Dramatic Lyrics,' 1842; No. iv. 'The Return of the Druses,' 
1843 ; No. V. 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon,' 1843 5 ^^- ^i- ' Colombe's 
Birthday,' 1844; No. vii. 'Dramatic Romances and Lyrics,' 
1845; and No. viii. 'Luria' and 'A Soul's Tragedy,' 1846. In a 
suppressed 'note of explanation' Browning stated that by the title 
'Bells and Pomegranates' he meant 'to indicate an endeavour 
towards something Hke an alternation, or mixture, of music with 
discoursing, sound with sense, poetry with thought.' Of the com- 
position of these works the following facts have been preserved. 
'Pippa Passes' was the result of the sudden image of a figure 
walking alone through life, which came to Browning in a wood near 
Dulwich. 'Dramatic Lyrics' contained the poem of 'The Pied 
Piper of HameHn,' which was written in May 1842 to amuse 
Macready's little son William, who made some illustrations for it 
which the poet preserved. At the same time was written ' Cres- 
centius,' which was not printed until 1890. 'The Lost Leader' 
was suggested by Wordsworth's ' abandonment of hberalism at an 
unlucky juncture;' but Browning resisted strenuously the notion 
that this poem was a 'portrait' of Wordsworth. In 1844 and 1845 
Browning contributed six important poems to ' Hood's Magazine ; ' 
all these — they included 'The Tomb at St. Praxed's' and 'The 
FHght of the Duchess ' — were reprinted in ' Bells and Pome- 
granates.' The play, 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon,' was written at 
the desire of Macready, and was first performed at Drury Lane 
on II Feb. 1843. It had been read in manuscript by Charles 
Dickens, who wrote, ' It has thrown me into a perfect passion of 
sorrow, and I swear it is a tragedy that must be played, and must 



6o2 EDMUND GOSSE 

be played, moreover, by Macready.' For some reason Forster 
concealed this enthusiastic judgment of Dickens from Browning, 
and probably from Macready. The latter did not act in it, and 
treated it with contumely. Browning gave the leading part to 
Phelps, and the heroine was played by Helen Faucit. The 
'Blot in the 'Scutcheon,' though well received, was 'underacted' 
and had but a short run. There followed a quarrel between the 
poet and Macready, who did not meet again till 1862. ' Colombe's 
Birthday' was read to the Keans on 10 March 1844, but as they 
wished to keep it by them until Easter, 1845, the poet took it away 
and printed it. It was not acted until 25 April 1853, when Helen 
Faucit and Barry Sullivan produced it at the Haymarket. About 
the same time it was performed at the Howard Athenaeum, 
Boston, U.S.A. 

In the autumn of 1844 Browning set out on his third journey 
to Italy, taking ship direct for Naples. He formed the acquaint- 
ance of a cultivated young Neapolitan, named Scotti, with whom he 
travelled to Rome. At Leghorn Browning visited E. J. Tre- 
lawney. The only definite relic of this journey which survives 
is a shell, 'picked up on one of the Syren Isles, October 4, 1844,' 
but its impressions are embodied in 'The Englishman in Italy,' 
'Home Thoughts from Abroad,' and other romances and lyrics. 
Browning was now at the very height of his genius. It was through 
Kenyon that Browning first became acquainted with Elizabeth 
Barrett Moulton Barrett, who was already celebrated as a poet, 
and had, indeed, achieved a far wider reputation than Browning. 
Miss Barrett was the cousin of Kenyon; a confirmed invalid, she 
saw no one and never left the house. She was an admirer of 
Browning's poems; he, on the other hand, first read hers in the 
course of the opening week of 1845, although he had become aware 
that she was a great poet. She was six years older than he, but 
looked much younger than her age. He was induced to write to 
her, and his first letter, addressed from Hatcham on 10 Jan. 1845 to 
Miss Barrett, at 50 Wimpole Street, is a declaration of passion: 
' I love your books, and I love you too.' She replied, less gushingly, 
but with warmest friendship, and in a few days they stood, without 
quite realising it at first, on the footing of lovers. Their earliest 
meeting, however, took place at Wimpole Street, in the aiternoon 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 603 

of Tuesday, 20 May, 1845. Miss Barrett received Browning prone 
on her sofa, in a partly darkened room; she 'instantly inspired 
him with a passionate admiration.' They corresponded with such 
fulness that their missives caught one another by the heels ; letters 
full of Uterature and tenderness and passion; in the course of 
which he soon begged her to allow him to devote his life to her care. 
She withdrew, but he persisted, and each time her denial grew 
fainter. He visited her three times a week, and these visits were 
successfully concealed from her father, a man of strange eccentric- 
ity and selfishness, who thought that the lives of all his children 
should be exclusively dedicated to himself, and who forbade any 
of them to think of marriage. In the whole matter the conduct of 
Browning, though hazardous and involving great moral courage, 
can only be considered strictly honourable and right. The happi- 
ness, and even perhaps the life, of the invalid depended upon her 
leaving the hothouse in which she was imprisoned. Her father 
acted as a mere tyrant, and the only alternatives were that Elizabeth 
should die in her prison or should escape from it with the man she 
loved. All Browning's preparations were undertaken with delicate 
forethought. On 12 Sept. 1846, in company with Wilson, her 
maid. Miss Barrett left Wimpole Street, took a fly from a cab-stand 
in Marylebone, and drove to St. Pancras Church, where they were 
privately married. She returned to her father's house; but on 
19 Sept. (Saturday) she stole away at dinner-time with her maid and 
Flush, her dog. At Vauxhall Station Browning met her, and at 
9 P.M. they left Southampton for Havre, and on the 20th were in 
Paris. In that city they found Mrs. Jameson, and in her company, 
a week later, started for Italy. They rested two days at Avignon, 
where, at the sources of Vaucluse, Browning lifted his wife through 
the ' chiare, frische e dolci acque,' and seated her on the rock where 
Petrarch had seen the vision of Laura. They passed by sea from 
Marseilles to Genoa. Early in October they reached Pisa, and 
settled there for the winter, taking rooms for six months in the 
Collegio Ferdinando. The health of Mrs. Browning bore the 
strain far better than could have been anticipated; indeed, the 
courageous step which the lovers had taken was completely jus- 
tified; Mr. Barrett, however, continued implacable. 

The poets lived with strict economy at Pisa, and Mrs. Browning 



604 EDMUND GOSSE 

benefited from the freedom and the beauty of Italy : ' I was never 
happy before in my life,' she wrote (5 Nov. 1846). Early in 1847 
she showed Browning the sonnets she had written during their 
courtship, which she proposed to call 'Sonnets from the Bosnian.' 
To this Browning objected, 'No, not Bosnian — that means 
nothing — but "From the Portuguese"! They are Catarina's 
sonnets.' These were privately printed in 1847, and ultimately 
published in 1850; they form an invaluable record of the loves of 
two great poets. Their life at Pisa was 'such a quiet, silent life,' 
and by the spring of 1847 the health of Elizabeth Browning 
seemed entirely restored by her happiness and liberty. In April 
they left Pisa and reached Florence on the 20th, taking up their 
abode in the Via delle Belle Donne. They made a plan of going 
for several months, in July, to Vallombrosa, but they were 'in- 
gloriously expelled' from the monastery at the end of five days. 
They had to return to Florence, and to rooms in the Palazzo Guidi, 
Via Maggio, the famous ' Casa Guidi.' Here also the life was most 
quiet : ' I can't make Robert go out for a single evening, not even 
to a concert, nor to hear a play of Alfieri's, yet we fill up our days 
with books and music, and a little writing has its share' (E.B.B. 
to Mary Mitford, 8 Dec. 1847). 

^ Early in 1848 Browning began to prepare a collected edition of 
his poems. He proposed that Moxon should pubhsh this at his 
own risk, but he declined; whereupon Browning made the same 
proposal to Chapman & Hall, or Forster did it for him, and they 
accepted. This edition appeared in two volumes in 1849, but 
contained only 'Bells and Pomegranates' and 'Paracelsus.' 'The 
Brownings had now been living in Florence, in furnished rooms, 
for more than a year, so they determined to set up a home for them- 
selves. They took an apartment of 'six beautiful rooms and a 
kitchen, three of them quite palace rooms, and opening on a terrace' 
in the Casa Guidi. They saw few English visitors, and 'as to 
Italian society, one may as well take to longing for the evening 
star, it is so inaccessible' (15 July 1848). In August they went 
to Fano, Ancona, Sinigaglia, Rimini, and Ravenna. In October 
Father Prout joined them for some weeks, and was a welcome 
apparition. The 'Blot in the 'Scutcheon' was revived this 
winter at Sadler's Wells, by Phelps, with success. On 9 March 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 605 

1849 was born in Casa Guidi the poets' only child, Robert 
Wiedemann Barrett Browning, and a few days later Browning's 
mother died. Sorrow greatly depressed the poet at this time, 
and their position in Florence, in the disturbed state of Tuscany, 
was precarious. They stayed there, however, and in July moved 
merely to the Bagni di Lucca, for three months' respite from the 
heat. They took ' a sort of eagle's nest, the highest house of the 
highest of the three villages, at the heart of a hundred mountains, 
sung to continually by a rushing mountain stream.' Here Brown- 
ing's spirits revived, and they enjoyed adventurous excursions 
into the mountains. In October they returned to Florence. Dur- 
ing this winter Browning was engaged in composing 'Christmas 
Eve and Easter Day,' which was published in March 1850. They 
gradually saw more people — Lever, Margaret Fuller Ossoli, 
Kirkup, Greenough, Miss Isa Blagden. In September the Brown- 
ings went to Poggio al Vento, a villa two miles from Siena, for a 
few weeks. The following months, extremely quiet ones, were 
spent in Casa Guidi, the health of Elizabeth Browning not being 
quite so satisfactory as it had pre\dously been since her marriage. 
On 2 May 1851 they started for Venice, where they spent a month; 
and then by Milan, Lucerne, and Strassburg to Paris, where they 
settled down for a few weeks. 

At the end of July they crossed over to England, after an absence 
of nearly five years, and stayed until the end of September in lodg- 
ings at 26 Devonshire Street. They lived very quietly, but saw 
Carlyle, Forster, Fanny Kemble, Rogers, and Barry Cornwall. 
As Mr. Barrett refused all communication with them, in September 
Browning wrote 'a manly, true, straightforward letter' to his 
father-in-law, appealing for a conciliatory attitude ; but he received 
a rude and insolent reply, enclosing, unopened, with the seals 
unbroken, all the letters which his daughter had written to him 
during the five years, and they settled, at the close of September, 
at 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysees ; the political events in Paris 
interested them exceedingly. It was on this occasion that Carlyle 
travelled with them from London to Paris. They were received 
by Madame Mohl, and at her house met various celebrities. 
Browning attracted some curiosity, his poetry having been intro- 
duced to French readers for the first time in the August number 



6o6 EDMUND GOSSE 

of the 'Revue des Deux Mondes,' by Joseph Milsand. They 
walked out in the early morning of 2 Dec. while the coup d^etat 
was in progress. In February 1852 Browning was induced to 
contribute a prose essay on Shelley to a volume of new letters by 
that poet, which Moxon was publishing ; he did not know anything 
about the provenance of the letters, and the introduction was on 
Shelley in general. However, to his annoyance, it proved that 
Moxon was deceived ; the letters were shown to be forgeries, and 
the book was immediately withdrawn. The Brownings saw 
George Sand (13 Feb.), and Robert walked the whole length of 
the Tuileries Gardens with her on his arm (7 April) ; but missed, 
by tiresome accidents, Alfred de Musset and Victor Hugo. 

At the end of June 1852 the Brownings returned to London, 
and took lodgings at 58 Welbeck Street. They went to see Ken- 
yon at Wimbledon, and met Landor there. They saw, about this 
time, Ruskin, Patmore, Monckton Milnes, Kingsley, and Tenny- 
son; and it is believed that in this year Browning's friendship 
with D. G. Rossetti began. Towards the middle of November 
1852 the Brownings returned to Florence, which Robert found 
deadly dull after Paris — 'no life, no variety.' This winter 
Robert (afterwards the first earl) Lytton made their acquaintance, 
and became an intimate friend, and they saw Frederick Tennyson, 
and Power, the sculptor. On 25 April 1853 Browning's play, 
' Colombe's Birthday,' was performed at the Haymarket for the 
first time. From July to October 1853 they spent in their old 
haunt in the Casa Tolomei, Bagni di Lucca, and here Browning 
wrote 'In a Balcony,' and was 'working at a volume of lyrics.' 
After a few weeks in Florence the Brownings moved on (Novem- 
ber 1853) to Rome, where they remained for six months, in the 
Via Bocca di Leone; here they saw Fanny Kemble, Thackeray, 
Mr. Aubrey de Vere, Lockhart (who said, 'I like Browning, he 
isn't at all like a damned literary man'), Leigh ton, and Ampere. 
They left Rome on 22 May, travelling back to Florence in a 
vettura. Money embarrassments kept them 'transfixed' at Flor- 
ence through the summer, ' unable even to fly to the mountains,' 
but the heat proved bearable, and they lived ' a very tranquil and 
happy fourteen months on their own sofas and chairs, among their 
own nightingales and fireflies.' 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 607 

This was a silent period in Browning's life ; he was hardly writ- 
ing anything new, but revising the old for 'Men and Women.' 
In February 1854 his poem 'The Twins' was privately printed 
for a bazaar. In July 1855 they left Italy, bringing with them the 
manuscripts of 'Men and Women' and of ' Aurora Leigh.' They 
went to 13 Dorset Street, where many friends visited them. It was 
here that, on 27 Sept., D. G. Rossetti made his famous drawing of 
Tennyson reading 'Maud' aloud. Here too was written the ad- 
dress to E.B.B., ' One Word More.' Soon after the publication of 
' Men and Women ' they went in October to Paris, lodging in great 
discomfort at 102 Rue de Grenelle, Faubourg St.-Germain. In 
December they moved to 3 Rue du Colisee, where they were 
.happier. Browning was now engaged on an attempt to rewrite 
' Sordello' in more intelligible form; this he presently abandoned. 
He had one of his very rare attacks of illness in April 1856, brought 
on partly by disinclination to take exercise. The poem of 'Ben 
Karshook's Wisdom,' which he excised from the proofs of 'Men 
and Women,' and which he never reprinted, appeared this year in 
'The Keepsake' as 'May and Death' in 1857. Kenyon having 
offered them his London house, 39 Devonshire Place, they returned 
in June 1856 to England, but were called to the Isle of Wight in 
September by the dangerous illness of that beloved friend. He 
seemed to rally, and in October the Brownings left for Florence; 
Kenyon, however, died on 3 Dec, leaving large legacies to the 
Brownings. ' During his life his friendship had taken the practical 
form of allowing them 100/. a year, in order that they might be 
more free to follow their art for its own sake only, and in his will 
he left 6,500/. to Robert Browning and 4,500/. to Elizabeth Brown- 
ing. These were the largest legacies in a very generous will — the 
fitting end to a life passed in acts of generosity and kindness' 
(F. G. Kenyon). The early part of 1857 was quietly spent in the 
Casa Guidi; but on 30 July the Brownings went, for the third 
time, to Bagni di Lucca. They were followed by Robert Lytton, 
who wished to be with them ; but he arrived unwell, and was pros- 
trated with gastric fever, through which Browning nursed him. 
The Brownings returned to Florence in the autumn, and the next 
twelve months were spent almost without an incident. But in 
July 1858 they went to Paris, where they stayed a fortnight at the 



6o8 EDMUND GOSSE 

Hotel Hyacinthe, Rue St.-Honore, and then went on to Havre, 
v/here they joined Browning's father and sister. In October 
they went back, through Paris, to Florence; but after six weeks 
left for Rome, where, on 24 Nov., they settled in their old rooms in 
43 Via Bocca di Leone. Here they saw much of Hawthorne, 
Massimo d'Azeglio, and Leighton. Browning, in accordance 
with a desire expressed by the queen, dined with the young prince 
of Wales at the embassy. They returned to Florence in May 1859, 
and to Siena, for three months, in July. It was at Florence at this 
time that the fierce and aged Landor presented himself to Brown- 
ing with a few pence in his pocket and without a home. Browning 
took him to Siena and rented a cottage for him there; at the end 
of the year Browning secured apartments for him in Florence, 
where he ended his days nearly five years later. 

At Siena Edward Burne- Jones and Mr. Val Prinsep joined the 
Brownings, and they saw much of one another the ensuing winter 
at Rome, whither the poets passed early in December, finding 
rooms at 28 Via del Tritone. Here Browning wrote 'Sludge the 
Medium,' in reference to Home's spiritualistic pranks, which had 
much affected Mrs. Browning's composure. They left Rome 
on 4 June i860, and travelled by vettura to Florence, through Or- 
vieto and Chiusi ; six weeks later they went, as before, to the Villa 
Alberti in Siena, returning to Florence in September. The steady 
decline of Elizabeth Browning's health was now a matter of con- 
stant anxiety ; this was hastened by the news of the death of her 
sister, Henrietta Surtees-Cook (December i860). From Siena 
the Brownings went this winter direct to Rome, to 126 Via Felice. 
In March 1861 Robert Browning, now nearly fifty, was 'looking 
remarkably well and young, in spite of all lunar lights in his hair. 
The women adore him everywhere far too much for decency. In 
my own opinion he is infinitely handsomer and more attractive 
than when I saw him first, sixteen years ago' (E. B. B.). At the 
close of May 1861, no definite alarm about Mrs. Browning being 
yet felt, they went back to Florence. She died at last after a few 
days' illness in Browning's arms, on 29 June 1861, in their apart- 
ments in Casa Guidi. Thus closed, after sixteen years of un- 
clouded marital happiness, one of the most interesting and 
romantic relations between a man and woman of genius which the 
history of literature presents to us. 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 609 

Browning was overwhelmed by a disaster which he had refused 
to anticipate. Miss Isa Blagden, whose friendship had long been 
invaluable to the Brownings in Florence, was ' perfect in all kind- 
ness' to the bereaved poet. With Browning and his little son 
Miss Blagden left Florence at the end of July 1861, and travelled 
with them to Paris, where he stayed at 151 Rue de Grenelle, 
Faubourg St.- Germain. Browning never returned to Florence. 
In Paris he parted from Miss Blagden, who went back to Italy, 
and he proceeded to St.-Enegat, near Dinard, where his father and 
sister were staying. In November 1861 he went on to London, 
wishing to consult with his wife's sister. Miss Arabel Barrett, as 
to the education of his child. She found him lodgings, as his 
intention was to make no lengthy stay in England ('no more 
housekeeping for me, even with my family'). Early in 1862, 
however, he became persuaded that this was a wretched arrange- 
ment, for his little son as well as for himself. Miss Arabel Barrett 
was living in Delamere Terrace, facing the canal, and Browning 
took a house, 19 Warwick Crescent, in the same line of buildings, 
a little further east. Here he arranged the furniture which had 
been around him in the Casa Guidi, and here he lived for more 
than five-and-twenty years. 

The winter of 1861, the first, it is said, which he had ever spent 
in London, was inexpressibly dreary to him. He was drawn to 
spend it and the following years in this way from a strong sense 
of duty to his father, his sister, and his son. He made it, moreover, 
a practice to visit Miss Arabel Barrett every afternoon, and with 
her he first attended Bedford Chapel to listen to the eloquent ser- 
mons of Thomas Jones (1819-1882). He became a seatholder 
there, and contributed a short introduction to a collection of Jones's 
sermons and addresses which appeared in 1884. He lived through 
1862 very quietly, in great depression of spirits, but devoted, like 
a mother, to the interests of his little son. In August he was per- 
suaded to go to the Pyrenees, and spent that month at Cambo; 
in September he went on to Biarritz, and here he began to meditate 
on 'my new poem which is about to be, the Roman murder story,' 
which ultimately became 'The Ring and the Book.' At the same 
time he made a close study of Euripides, which left a strong mark 
on his future work, and he saw through the press the 'Last Poems' 

2R 



6 10 EDMUND GOSSE 

of his wife, to which he prefixed a dedication 'to grateful Florence.* 
In October he returned by Paris to London. 

On reappearing in London he was pestered by applications from 
volunteer biographers of his wife. His anguish at these imperti- 
nences disturbed his peace and even his health. On this subject 
his indignation remained to the last extreme, and the expressions 
of it were sometimes unwisely violent. 'Nothing that ought to be 
published shall be kept back,' however, he determined, and there- 
fore in the course of 1863 he published Mrs. Browning's prose 
essays on ' The Greek Christian Poets.' His own poems appeared 
this year in two forms: a selection, edited by John Forster and 
Barry Cornwall, and a three-volume edition, relatively complete. 

Up to this time the Procters (Barry Cornwall and his wife) were 
almost the only company he kept outside his family circle. But 
with the spring of 1863 a great change came over his habits. He 
had refused all invitations into society; but now, of evenings, 
after he had put his boy to bed, the solitude weighed intolerably 
upon him. He told the present writer, long afterwards, that it 
suddenly occurred to him on one such spring night in 1863 that this 
mode of life was morbid and unworthy, and, then and there, he 
determined to accept for the future every suitable invitation which 
came to him. Accordingly he began to dine out, and in the process 
of time he grew to be one of the most familiar figures of the age at 
every dining-table, concert-hall, and place of refined entertainment 
in London. This, however, was a slow process. In 1863, 1864, 
and 1865 Browning spent the summer at Sainte-Marie, near 
Pornic, 'a wild little place in Brittany,' by which he was singularly 
soothed and refreshed. Here he wrote most of the 'Dramatis 
Personae.' Early in 1864 he privately printed, as a pamphlet, 
'Gold Hair: a legend of Pornic,' and later, as a volume, the im- 
portant volume of 'Dramatis Personae,' containing some of the 
finest and most characteristic of his work. In this year (12 Feb.) 
Browning's will was signed in the presence of Tennyson and 
F. T. Palgrave. He never modified it. Through these years 
his constant occupation was his ' great venture, the murder-poem,' 
which was now gradually taking shape as ' The Ring and the Book.' 
In September 1865 he was occupied in making a selection from Mrs. 
Browning's poems, whose fame and sale continued greatly to exceed 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 6ll 

his own, although he was now at length beginning to be widely 
read. In June 1866 he was telegraphed for to Paris, and arrived 
in time to be with his father when he died (14 June). On the 19th 
he returned to London, bringing his sister with him. For the 
remainder of his life she kept house for him. They left almost 
immediately for Dinard, and passed on to Le Croisic, a Httle town 
near the mouth of the Loire, which delighted Browning exceed- 
ingly. Here he took ' the most delicious and peculiar old house I 
ever occupied, the oldest in the town; plenty of great rooms.' 
It was here that he wrote the ballad of 'Herve Riel' (September 
1867) which was published four years later. During 1866 and 
1867 Browning greatly enjoyed Le Croisic. In June 1868 Arabel 
Barrett died in Browning's arms. She had been his wife's favour- 
ite sister, and the one who resembled her most in character and 
temperament. Her death caused the poet long distress, and for 
many years he was careful never to pass her house in Delamere 
Terrace. In June of this year he was made an hon. M.A. of Ox- 
ford, and in October honorary fellow of Balliol College, mainly 
through the friendship of Jowett. At the death of J. S. Mill, 
in 1868, Browning was asked if he would take the lord-rectorship 
of St. Andrews University, but he did not feel himself justified 
in accepting any duties which would involve vague but consider- 
able extra expenditure. 

In 1868 Messrs. Smith, Elder, & Co. became Browning's pub- 
lishers, and with Mr. George Smith the poet formed a close friend- 
ship which lasted until his death. The firm of Smith, Elder, & 
Co. issued in 1868 a six-volume edition of Browning's works, and 
in November-December 1868, January-February 1869, they 
published, in four successive monthly instalments, ' The Ring and 
the Book.' Browning presented the manuscript to Mr. Smith. 
The history of this, the longest and most imposing of Browning's 
works, appears to be as follows. In June i860 he had discovered 
in the Piazza San Lorenzo, Florence, a parchment-bound proces- 
verbal of a Roman murder case, 'the entire criminal cause of 
Guido Franceschini, and four cut- throats in his pay,' executed 
for their crimes in 1698. He bought this volume for eight-pence, 
read it through with intense and absorbed attention, and imme- 
diately perceived the extraordinary value of its group of parallel 



6l2 EDMUND GOSSE 

studies in psychology. He proposed it to Miss Ogle as the subject 
of a prose romance, and ' for poetic use to one of his leading con- 
temporaries ' (Mrs. Orr). It was not until after his wife's death 
that he determined to deal with it himself, and he first began to 
plan a poem on the theme at Biarritz in September 1862. He read 
the original documents eight times over before starting on his work, 
and had arrived by that time at a perfect clairvoyance, as he be- 
lieved, of the motives of all the persons concerned. The reception 
of ' The Ring and the Book ' was a triumph for the author, who now, 
close on the age of sixty, for the first time took his proper place in 
the forefront of living men of letters. The sale of his earlier works, 
which had been so fluctuating that at one time not a single copy of 
any one of them was asked for during six months, now became 
regular and abundant, and the night of Browning's long obscurity 
was over. A second edition of the entire ' Ring and the Book' was 
called for in 1869. In the summer of that year Browning travelled 
in Scotland with the Storys, ending up with a visit to Louisa, 
Lady Ashburton, at Loch Luichart. For the monument to Lord 
Dufferin's mother he composed (26 April 1870) the sonnet called 
'Helen's Tower.' 

The summer of this year, in spite of the Franco-German war, 
was spent by the Brownings with Milsand in a primitive cottage 
on the sea-shore at St.-Aubin, opposite Havre. The poet wrote, 
' I don't think we were ever quite so thoroughly washed by the sea- 
air from all quarters as here.' The progress of the war troubled the 
Brownings' peace of mind, and, more than this, it put serious diffi- 
culties in the way of their return to England. They contrived, 
after some adventures, to get themselves transported by a cattle- 
vessel which happened to be leaving Honfleur for Southampton 
(September 1870). In March 187 1 the 'Cornhill Magazine' 
published 'Herve Riel' (which had been written in 1867 at Le 
Croisic) ; the 100/. which he was paid for the serial use of this poem 
he sent to the sufferers by the siege of Paris. In the course of this 
year Browning was writing with great activity. Through the 
spring months he was occupied in completing 'Balaustion's Ad- 
venture,' the dedication of which is dated 22 July 1871; it was 
published early in the autumn. After a very brief visit to the Mil- 
sands at St.-Aubin, Browning spent the rest of the summer of this 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 613 

year in Scotland, where he composed ' Prince Hohenstiel-Schwan- 
gau,' which was published early the following winter. In this 
year (187 1) Browning was elected a life-governor of University 
College, London. Early in 1872 Milsand visited him in London, 
and Alfred Domett (Waring) came back at last from New Zealand ; 
on the other hand, on 26 Jan. 1873 died the faithful and sym- 
pathetic Isa Blagden (cf. T. A. Trollope, What I Remember, 
ii. 174). In 1872 Browning published one of the most fantastic 
of his books, 'Fifine at the Fair,' composed in Alexandrines; 
this poem is reminiscent of the life at Pornic in 1863-5, and of a 
gipsy whom the poet saw there. Mrs. Orr records that 'it was 
not without misgiving that he published "Fifine."' He spent 
the summer of 1872 and 1873 at St.-Aubin, meeting there in the 
earlier year Miss Thackeray (Mrs. Ritchie) ; she discussed with 
him the symbolism connecting the peaceful existence of the Norman 
peasantry with their white head-dress, and when Browning re- 
turned to London he began to compose 'Red Cotton Nightcap 
Country,' which was finished in January and published in June 
1873, with a dedication to Miss Thackeray. In 1874, at the in- 
stance of an old friend, Miss A. Egerton-Smith, the Brownings 
took with her a house, Maison Robert, on the cliff at Mers, close 
to Treport, and here he wrote 'Aristophanes' Apology,' including 
the remarkable 'transcript' from the 'Herakles' of Euripides. 
At Mers his manner of life is thus described to us: 'In uninter- 
rupted quiet, and in a room devoted to his use, Mr. Browning 
would work till the afternoon was advanced, and then set forth on 
a long walk over the cliffs, often in the face of a wind which he 
could lean against as if it were a wall.' 'Aristophanes' Apology' 
was published early in 1875. During the spring of this year he 
was engaged in London in writing ' The Inn Album,' which he com- 
pleted and sent to press while the Brownings were at Villers- 
sur-Mer, in Calvados, during the summer and autumn of 1875, 
again in company with Miss Egerton-Smith. In the summer 
of 1876 the same party occupied a house in the Isle of Arran. 
Browning was at this time very deeply occupied in studying the 
Greek dramatists, and began a translation of the 'Agamemnon.' 
In July 1876 he published the volume known from its title-poem as 
' Pacchiarotto.' This revealed in several of its numbers a condition 



6l4 EDMUND GOSSE 

of nervous irritability, which was reflected in the poet's daily life ; 
he was far from well in London during these years, although a 
change of air to France or Scotland never failed to produce a 
sudden improvement in health and spirits ; and it was away from 
town that his poetry was mainly composed. In 1877 there appeared 
his translation of the ' Agamemnon ' of ^EschylUs, and he again 
refused the lord-rectorship of St. Andrews University, as in 1875 
he had refused that of Glasgow. 

For the summer and autumn of 1877 the friends took a house at 
the foot of La Saleve, in Savoy, just above Geneva; it was called 
La Saisiaz ; here Browning sat, as he said, ' aerially, like Euripides, 
and saw the clouds come and go.' He was not, however, in any- 
thing like his usual spirits, and he suffered a terrible shock early 
in September by the sudden death of Miss Egerton-Smith. The 
present writer recollects the extraordinary change which appeared 
to have passed over the poet when he reappeared in London, nor 
will easily forget the tumult of emotion with which he spoke of the 
shock of his friend's dying, almost at his feet. He put his reflec- 
tions on the subject into the strange and noble poem of ' La Saisiaz,' 
which he finished in November 1877. He lightened the gloom of 
what was practically a monody on Miss Egerton-Smith by con- 
trasting it with one of the Hveliest of his French studies, 'The 
Two Poets of Croisic,' which he completed in January 1878. 
These two works, the one so solemn, the other so sunny, were pub- 
lished in a single volume in the spring of 1878. 

In August 1878 he revisited Italy for the first time since 1861. 
He stayed some time at the Spliigen, and here he wrote *Ivan 
Ivanovitch.' Late in September his sister and he passed on to 
Asolo, which, for the moment, failed to reawaken his old pleasure; 
and in October they went on to Venice, where they stayed in the 
Palazzo Brandolin-Rota. This was a comparatively short visit 
to Italy, but it awakened all Browning's old enthusiasm, and for 
the remainder of his life he went to Italy as often and for as long a 
time as he could contrive to. During this autumn, and while in 
the south, he wrote the greater part of the ' Dramatic Idyls,' pub- 
lished early in 1879. His fame was now universal, and he enjoyed 
for the first time full recognition as one of the two sovereign poets 
of the age. ' Tennyson and I seem now to be regarded as the two 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 615 

kings of Brentford,' he laughingly said in the course of this year. 
His sister and he returned to Venice, and to their former quarters, 
in the autumn of 1879 and again in that of 1880. In the latter year 
he published a second series of 'Dramatic Idyls,' including Xlive,' 
which he was accustomed to mention as perhaps the best of all his 
idylHc poems 'in the Greek sense.' 

In the summer of 188 1 Dr. Furnivall and Miss E. H. Hickey 
started the 'Browning Society' for the interpretation and illustra- 
tion of his writings. He received the intimation of their project 
with divided feelings; he could not but be gratified at the enthu- 
siasm shown for his work after long neglect, and yet he was appre- 
hensive of ridicule. He did not refuse to permit it, but he decKned 
most positively to cooperate in it. He persisted, when talking of 
it to old friends, in treating it as a joke, and he remained to the 
last a little nervous about being identified with it. It involved, 
indeed, a position of great danger to a living writer, but, on the 
whole, the action of the society on the fame and general popularity 
of the poet was distinctly advantageous; and so much worship 
was agreeable to a man who had passed middle life without the due 
average of recognition. He became, about the same time, presi- 
dent of the New Shakspere Society. 

The autumn of 1881 was the last which the Brownings spent at 
the Palazzo Brandolin-Rota. On their way to it they stopped for 
six weeks at Saint-Pierre-la-Chartreuse, close to the monastery, 
where the poet lodged three days, ' staying there through the night 
in order to hear the midnight mass.' This autumn, in spite of 
'abominable and un- Venetian' weather, was greatly appreciated. 
' I walk, even in wind and rain, for a couple of hours on Lido, and 
enjoy the break of sea on the strip of sand as much as Shelley did 
in those old days' (11 Oct. 1881). Browning had now reached his 
seventieth year, and, for the first time, the flow of his poetic in- 
vention seemed to flag a httle. He did not write much from 1879 
to 1883. In 1882 the Brownings proceeded again to Saint-Pierre- 
la-Chartreuse for the summer, intending to go on to Venice; but 
at Verona they learned that the Palazzo Brandolin-Rota had been 
transformed into a museum, and, while they hesitated whither they 
should turn, the floods of the Po cut them off from Venice. This 
autumn, therefore, they made Verona their headquarters; and 



6i6 EDMUND. GOSSE 

here Browning wrote several of the poems which appeared early in 
1883, under the Batavian-Latin title ' Jocoseria.' 

In 1883 the Brownings spent the summer opposite Monte Rosa, 
at Gressoney St. -Jean, a place to which the poet became more 
attached than to any other Alpine station ; later on they passed to 
Venice, where their excellent friend, Mrs. Arthur Bronson (she 
died on 6 Feb. 1901), received them as her guests in the Palazzo 
Giustiniani Recanati. Here Browning wrote the sonnets ' Sighed 
Rawdon Brown' and 'Goldoni.' In these later years, his bodily 
endurance having steadily declined, Browning saw fewer and fewer 
people during his long Venetian sojourns, depending mainly out- 
side the salon of Mrs. Bronson on ' the kindness of Sir Henry and 
Lady Layard, of Mr. and Mrs. Curtis of Palazzo Barbazo, and of 
Mr. and Mrs. Frederic Eden, for most of his social pleasure and 
comfort' (Mrs. Orr). In 1884 Browning was made an hon. 
LL.D. of the university of Edinburgh ; for a third time he declined 
to be elected lord rector of the university of St. Andrews. There 
had been a suggestion in 1876 that he should stand for the professor- 
ship of poetry at Oxford; this idea was now revived, and greatly 
attracted him; he said that if he were elected, his first lecture 
would be on 'Beddoes: a forgotten Oxford Poet.' It was dis- 
covered, however, that not having taken the ordinary M.A. degree, 
he was not eligible. He wrote much in this year, for besides the 
sonnets, 'The Names' and 'The Founder of the Feast,' and an 
introduction to the posthumous sermons of Thomas Jones, he com- 
posed a great number of the idyls and lyrics collected in the winter 
of 1884 as 'Ferishtah's Fancies.' The summer of 1884 was 
broken up by an illness of Miss Browning, and the poet did not 
get to Italy at all, contenting himself with spending August and 
September in her villa at St.-Moritz with Mrs. Bloomfield Moore, 
a widow lady from Philadelphia with whom Browning was at this 
time on terms of close friendship. 

In 1885 Browning accepted the honorary presidency of the Five 
Associated Societies of Edinburgh, and in April wrote the fine 
' Inscription for the Gravestone of Levi Thaxter.' In the summer 
he went again to Gressoney St. -Jean, thence proceeding for the 
autumn and winter to Venice. He was now settled in the Palazzo 
Giustiniani Recanati, but his son, who joined him, urged the 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING^ 617 

purchase of a house in Venice. Accordingly, in November 1885 
Browning secured, or thought that he had secured, the Palazzo 
Manzoni, on the Grand Canal ; but the owners, the Montecuccule, 
raised so many claims that he withdrew from the bargain just in 
time — happily, as it proved, for the foundations of the palace were 
not in a safe condition ; but the failure of the negotiations annoyed 
and distressed him to a degree which betrayed his decrease of nerve 
power. Early in 1886 Browning succeeded Lord Houghton as the 
foreign correspondent to the Royal Academy, a sinecure post which 
he accepted at the earnest wish of Sir Frederic Leighton. Venice 
having ceased to attract him for a moment, in 1886 he made the 
poor state of health of his sister his excuse for remaining in England, 
his only absence from London being a somewhat lengthy autumnal 
residence at the Hand Hotel in Llangollen, close to the house of 
his friends, Sir Theodore and Lady Martin at Brintysilio. After 
his death a tablet was placed in the church of Llantysilio to mark 
the spot where the poet was seen every Sunday afternoon during 
those weeks of 1886. On 4 Sept. of this year his oldest friend 
passed away in the person of Joseph Milsand, to whose memory 
he dedicated the 'Parleyings' which he was now composing. 
This volume, the full title of which was 'Parleyings with certain 
People of Importance in their Day,' consisted, with a prologue and 
an epilogue, of seven studies in biographical psychology. In 
June 1887 the threat of a railway to be constructed in front of the 
house in which he had lived so long (a threat which was not carried 
out) induced him to leave 19 Warwick Crescent and take a new 
house in Kensington, 29 De Vere Gardens. While the change 
was being made he went to Mrs. Bloomfield Moore at St.-Moritz 
for the summer, but, instead of proceeding to Venice, returned 
in September to London. This winter 'he was often suffering; 
one terrible cold followed another. There was general evidence 
that he had at last grown old' (Mrs. Orr). But he was still 
writing; 'Rosny' belongs to December of this year, and 'Flute- 
Music' to January 1888. He now began to arrange for a uniform 
edition of his works, which he Hved just long enough to see com- 
pleted. 

In August his sister and he left for Italy; they stayed first at 
Primiero, near Feltre. By this time his son (who had married in 



6l8 EDMUND GOSSE 

October 1887) had purchased the Palazzo Rezzonico in Venice, 
with money given him for the purpose by his father, and this he 
was now fitting up for Browning's reception. Browning stayed 
first in Ca'Alvise, and had on the whole a very happy autumn and 
winter in Venice. He did not return to London until February 
1889. 'He still maintained throughout the season his old social 
routine, not omitting his yearly visit, on the anniversary of Water- 
loo, to Lord Albemarle, its last surviving veteran' (Mrs. Orr). 
In the summer he paid memorable visits to Jowett at Balliol 
College, Oxford, and to Dr. Butler at Trinity College, Cambridge. 
But his strength was visibly failing, and when the time came for 
the customary journey to Venice, he shrank from the fatigue. 
However, in the middle of August he was persuaded to start for 
Asolo, where Mrs. Bronson was, instead of Venice. He was 
extremely happy at Asolo, and 'seemed possessed by a strange 
buoyancy — an almost feverish joy in life, which blunted all sen- 
sations of physical distress.' He tried to purchase a small house 
in Asolo ; he meant to call it Pippa's Tower ; and since his death 
it has, with much other land in the town, become the property of 
his son. At the beginning of November he tore himself away 
from Asolo, and settled in at the Palazzo Rezzonico in Venice. 
He thought himself quite well, and walked each day in the Lido. 
But the temperature was very low, and his heart began to fail. He 
wrote to England (29 Nov.) : ' I have caught a cold ; I feel sadly 
asthmatic, scarcely fit to travel, but I hope for the best;' on the 
30th he declared it was only his 'provoking liver,' and hoped soon 
to be in England. But he now sank from day to day, and at ten 
P.M., on 12 Dec. 1889, he died in the Palazzo Rezzonico. 'It was 
an unexpected blow,' his sister wrote, 'he seemed in such excellent 
health and exuberant spirits.' On the 14th, with solemn pomp, 
the body was given the ceremony of a public funeral in Venice, 
but on the i6th was conveyed to England, where, on 31 Dec, it 
was buried in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, the pall being 
carried by Lord Dufferin, Leighton, Sir Theodore Martin, George 
M. Smith (his publisher), and other illustrious friends. Brown- 
ing's last volume of poems, ' Asolando,' was actually published on 
the day of his death ; but a message with regard to the eagerness 
with which it had been ' subscribed ' for had time to reach him on 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 619 

his death-bed, and he expressed his pleasure at the news. Shortly 
after his death memorial tablets were affixed by the city of Venice 
to the outer wall of the Palazzo Rezzonico, and by the Society of 
Arts to that of 19 Warwick Crescent. He left behind him his sister, 
Miss Sarianna Browning, and his son, Mr. Robert Wiedemann 
Barrett Browning, who are now resident at Venice and Asolo. 

Browning's rank in the literature of the nineteenth century has 
been the subject of endless disputation. It can be discussed here 
only from the point of view of the illustration of his writings by 
his person and character. As a contributor to thought, it is notice- 
able in the first place that Browning was almost alone in his genera- 
tion in preaching a persistent optimism. In the latest of his 
published poems, in the 'Epilogue' to 'Asolando,' he sums up and 
states with unflinching clearness his attitude towards Hfe. He 
desires to be remembered as 

One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward, 

Never doubted clouds would break, 
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, 
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 

Sleep to wake. 

No poet ever comprehended his own character better, or com- 
prised the expression of it in better language. This note of mili- 
tant optimism was the ruling one in Browning's character, and 
nothing that he wrote or said or did in his long career ever belied 
it. This optimism was not discouraged by the results of an im- 
passioned curiosity as to the conditions and movements of the soul 
in other people. He was, as a writer, largely a psychological 
monologuist — that is to say, he loved to enter into the nature of 
persons widely different from himself, and push his study, or con- 
struction, of their experiences to the furthest limit of exploration. 
In these adventures he constantly met with evidences of baseness, 
frailty, and inconsistency; but his tolerance was apostolic, and the 
only thing which ever disturbed his moral equanimity was the evi- 
dences of selfishness. He could forgive anything but cruelty. 
His optimism accompanied his curiosity on these adventures into 
the souls of others, and prevented him from falling into cynicism or 
indignation. He kept his temper and was a benevolent observer. 



620 EDMUND GOSSE 

This characteristic in his writings was noted in his life as well. 
Although Browning was so sublime a metaphysical poet, nothing 
delighted him more than to listen to an accumulation of trifling 
(if exact) circumstances which helped to build up the life of a hu- 
man being. Every man and woman whom he met was to Brown- 
ing a poem in solution; some chemical condition might at any 
moment resolve any one of the multitude into a crystal. His 
optimism, his curiosity, and his clairvoyance occupied his thoughts 
in a remarkably objective way. He was of all poets the one least 
self-centred, and therefore in all probability the happiest. His 
physical conditions were in harmony with his spiritual charac- 
teristics. He was robust, active, loud in speech, cordial in manner, 
gracious and conciliatory in address, but subject to sudden fits of 
indignation which were like thunderstorms. In all these respects 
it seems probable that his character altered very little as the years 
went on. What he was as a boy, in these respects, it is believed that 
he continued to be as an old man. ' He missed the morbid over- 
refinement of the age; the processes of his mind were sometimes 
even a little coarse, and always delightfully direct. For real deli- 
cacy he had full appreciation, but he was brutally scornful of all 
exquisite morbidness. The vibration of his loud voice, his hard 
fist upon the table, would make very short work with cobwebs. 
But this external roughness, like the rind of a fruit, merely served 
to keep the inner sensibilities young and fresh. None of his in- 
stincts grew old. Long as he lived, he did not live long enough for 
one of his ideals to vanish, for one of his enthusiasms to lose its 
heat. The subtlest of writers, he was the singlest of men, and he 
learned in serenity what he taught in song.' The question of the 
'obscurity' of his style has been mooted too often and emphasised 
too much by Browning's friends and enemies alike, to be passed 
over in silence here. But here, at the same time, it is impossible to 
deal with it exhaustively. Something may, however, be said in 
admission and in defence. We must admit that Browning is often 
harsh, hard, crabbed, and nodulous to the last degree; he sup- 
pressed too many of the smaller parts of speech in his desire to 
produce a concise and rapid impression. He twisted words out 
of their fit construction, he clothed extremely subtle ideas in lan- 
guage which sometimes made them appear not merely difficult 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 62 1 

but impossible of comprehension. Odd as it sounds to say so, 
these faults seem to have been the result of too facile a mode of 
composition. Perhaps no poet of equal importance has written 
so fluently and corrected so little as Browning did. On the other 
hand, in defence, it must be said that it is always, or nearly always, 
possible to penetrate Browning's obscurity, and to find excellent 
thought hidden in the cloud, and that time and familiarity have 
already made a great deal perfectly translucent which at one time 
seemed impenetrable even to the most respectful and intelligent 
reader. 

In person Browning was below the middle height, but broadly 
built and of great muscular strength, which he retained through 
life in spite of his indifference to all athletic exercises. His hair 
was dark brown, and in early life exceedingly full and lustrous; 
in middle life it faded, and in old age turned white, remaining copi- 
ous to the last. The earliest known portrait of Browning is that 
engraved for Home's ' New Spirit of the Age ' in 1844, when he was 
about thirty-two. In 1854 a highly finished pencil drawing of 
him was made in Rome by Frederic Leighton, but this appears 
to be lost. In 1855, or a little later. Browning was painted by 
Gordigiani, and in 1856 Woolner executed a bronze medallion 
of him. In 1859 Mr. and Mrs. Browning sat to Field Talfourd in 
Florence for life-sized crayon portraits, of which that of Elizabeth 
is now in the National Portrait Gallery, where that of Robert, 
long in the possession of the present writer, joined it in July 1900. 
Of this portrait Browning wrote long afterwards (23 Feb. 1888), 
' My sister — a better authority than myself — has always liked it, 
as resembHng its subject when his features had more resemblance 
to those of his mother than in after-time, when those of his father 
got the better — or perhaps the worse — of them.' . He was again 
painted by Mr. G. F. Watts, R.A., about 1865, and by Mr. Rudolf 
Lehmann in 1859 and several later occasions. The portraits by 
Watts and Lehmann are in the National Portrait Gallery. In his 
last years Browning, with extreme good-nature, was willing to sit 
for his portrait to any one who asked him. He was once discovered 
in Venice, surrounded, like a model in a life-class, by a group of 
artistic ladies, each taking him off from a different point of view. 
Of these representations of Browning as an old man, the best are 



622 EDMUND GOSSE 

certainly those executed by his son, in particular a portrait painted 
in the summer and autumn of 1880. 

The publications of Robert Browning, with their dates of issue, 
have been mentioned in the course of the narrative. The first of 
the collected editions, the so-called 'New Edition' of 1849, in 2 
vols., was not complete even up to date. Much more comprehen- 
sive was the 'third edition' (really the second) of the 'Poetical 
Works of Robert Browning' issued in 1863. A 'fourth' (third) 
appeared in 1865. 'Selections' were published in 1863 and 1865. 
The earliest edition of the 'Poetical Works' which was complete 
in any true sense was that issued by Messrs. Smith, Elder, & Co. 
in 1868, in six volumes; here 'Pauline' first reappeared, and here 
is published for the first time the poem entitled ' Deaf and Dumb.' 
These volumes represent Browning's achievements down to, but 
not including, 'The Ring and the Book.' Further independent 
selections were published in 1872 and 1880 ; and both were reprinted 
in 1884. A beautiful separate edition of 'The Pied Piper of 
Hamelin,' made to accompany Pinwell's drawings, belongs to 
1884. The edition of Browning's works, in sixteen volumes, 
was issued in 1888-9, ^^^^ contains everything but ' Asolando.' In 
1896 there appeared a complete edition, in two volumes, edited 
by Mr. Augustine Birrell, Q.C., M.P., and Mr. F. G. Kenyon. 

A claim has been made for the authorship by Browning of John 
Forster's 'Life of Strafford,' originally published in 1836; and this 
book was rashly reprinted by the Browning Society in 1892 as 
'Robert Browning's Prose Life of Strafford.' This attribution 
was immediately repudiated, in the least equivocal terms possible, 
by the surviving representatives of the Browning and Forster 
families. It is possible that Forster may have received some help 
from Browning in the preparation of the book, but it was certainly 
written by Forster. 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 623 

THE LIFE OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

SIDNEY COLVIN 
[From the Dictionary of National Biography."] 

Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-1894), novelist, essayist, 
poet, and traveller, was born at 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, on 
13 Nov. 1850. He was baptised Robert Lewis Balfour, but from 
about his eighteenth year dropped the use of the third christian 
name and changed the spelling of the second to Louis; signing 
thereafter Robert Louis in full, and being called always Louis 
by his family and intimate friends. On both sides of the house 
he was sprung from capable and cultivated stock. His father, 
Thomas Stevenson, was a member of the distinguished Edinburgh 
firm of civil engineers. His mother was Margaret Isabella {d. 14 
May 1897), youngest daughter of James Balfour, for many years 
minister of the parish of Colinton in Midlothian, and grandson to 
James Balfour (1705-1795), professor at Edinburgh first of moral 
philosophy and afterwards of the law of nature and of nations. 
His mother's father was described by his grandson in the essay 
called 'The Manse.' Robert Louis was his parents' only child. 
His mother was subject in early and middle life to chest and nerve 
troubles, and her son may have inherited from her some of his con- 
stitutional weakness as well as of his intellectual vivacity and 
taste for letters. His health was infirm from the first. Hesufi'ered 
from frequent bronchial affections and acute nervous excitability, 
and in the autumn of 1858 was near dying of a gastric fever. In 
January 1853 his parents moved to No. i Inverleith Terrace, 
and in May 1857 to 17 Heriot Row, which continued to be their 
Edinburgh home until the father's death in 1887. Much of his 
time was also spent in the manse at Colinton on the water of Leith, 
the home of his maternal grandfather. If he suffered much as a 
child from the distresses, he also enjoyed to the full the pleasures, 
of imagination. He was eager in every kind of play, and made the 
most of all the amusements natural to an only child kept much 
indoors by ill-health. The child in him never died; and the zest 
with which in after Hfe he would throw himself into the pursuits of 



624 SIDNEY COLVIN 

children and young boys was on his own account as much as on 
theirs. This spirit is illustrated in the pieces which he wrote and 
published under the title 'A Child's Garden of Verses,' as well 
as in a number of retrospective essays and fragments referring 
with pecuhar insight and freshness of memory to that period of 
life ('Child's Play/ 'Notes of Childhood,' 'Rosa quo locorum,' 
and others unpublished). 

Such a child was naturally a greedy reader, or rather listener to 
reading ; for it was not until his eighth year that he learned to read 
easily or habitually to himself. He began early to take pleasure in 
attempts at composition: a 'History of Moses,' dictated in his 
sixth year, and an account of 'Travels in Perth,' in his ninth, are 
still extant. Ill-health prevented his getting much regular or 
continuous schoohng. He attended first (1858-61) a preparatory 
school kept by a Mr. Henderson in India Street ; and next (at in- 
tervals for some time after the autumn of 1861) the Edinburgh 
Academy. For a few months in the autumn of 1863 he was at 
a boarding-school kept by a Mr. Wyatt at Spring Grove, near 
London; from 1864 to 1867 his education was conducted chiefly 
at Mr. Thompson's private school in Frederick Street, Edin- 
burgh, and by private tutors in various places to which he 
travelled for his own or his parents' health. Such travels in- 
cluded frequent visits to health resorts in Scotland; occasional 
excursions with his father on his nearer professional rounds, e.g. 
to the coasts and lighthouses of Fife in 1864; and also longer 
journeys — to Germany and Holland in 1862, to Italy in 1863, to 
the Riviera in the spring of 1864, and to Torquay in 1865 and 
1866. From 1867 the family life became more settled between 
Edinburgh and Swanston cottage, a country home in the Pent- 
lands which Thomas Stevenson first rented in that year, and the 
scenery and associations of which inspired not a little of his son's 
work in literature (see especially A Pastoral and St. Ives). 

In November of the same year, 1867, Louis Stevenson was 
entered as a student at the Edinburgh University, and for several 
winters attended classes there with such regularity as his health 
and inclinations permitted. According to his own account (essay 
on A College Magazine; Life of Fleeming Jenkin, &c.), he was 
alike at school and college an incorrigible idler and truant. But 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 625 

outside the field of school and college routine he showed eager 
curiosity and activity of mind. ' He was of a conversable temper/ 
so he says of himself, ' and insatiably curious in the aspects of life ; 
and spent much of his time scraping acquaintance with all classes 
of man and woman kind.' At the same time he read precociously 
and omnivorously in the belles-lettres, including a very wide range 
of English poetry, fiction, and essays, and a fairly wide range of 
French; and was a genuine student of Scottish history, and to 
some extent of history in general. He had been intended as a 
matter of course to follow the family profession of engineering; 
and from 1868 his summer excursions took a professional turn. 
In that and the two following years he went to watch the works 
of the firm in progress at various points on the mainland and in 
the northern and western islands. He was a favourite, though a 
very irregular, pupil of the professor of engineering, Fleeming 
Jenkin; and must have shown some aptitude for the calling 
hereditary in his family, inasmuch as in 187 1 he received the silver 
medal of the Edinburgh Society of Arts for a paper on a suggested 
improvement in lighthouse apparatus. The outdoor and seafaring 
parts of the profession were in fact wholly to his taste, as in spite 
of his frail health he had a passion for open-air exercise and adven- 
ture (though not for sports). Office work, on the other hand, was 
his aversion, and his physical powers were unequal to the workshop 
training necessary to the practical engineer. Accordingly in this 
year, 1871, it was agreed that he should give up the hereditary 
profession and read for the bar. 

For several ensuing years Stevenson attended law classes in the 
university, giving to the subject some serious although fitful atten- 
tion, until he was called to the bar in 1875. But it was on another 
side that this 'pattern of an idler,' to use his own words, was gradu- 
ally developing himself into a model of unsparing industry. From 
childhood he had never ceased to practise writing, and on all his 
truantries went pencil and copybook in hand. Family and school 
magazines in manuscript are extant of which, between his thirteenth 
and sixteenth years, he was editor, chief contributor, and illustrator. 
In his sixteenth year he wrote a serious essay on the 'Pentland 
Rising of 1666' (having already tried his hand at an historical 
romance on the same subject). This was printed as a pamphlet, 
2 s 



626 SIDNEY COLVIN 

and is now a rarity in request among collectors. For the following 
four or five years, though always writing both in prose and verse, 
he kept his efforts to himself, and generally destroyed the more 
ambitious of them. Among these were a romance on the life of 
Hackston of Rathillet, a poetical play of 'Semiramis' written in 
imitation of Webster, and 'Voces Fidelium,' a series of dramatic 
dialogues in verse. A few manuscript essays and notes of travel 
that have been preserved from 1868 to 1870, together with his 
letters to his mother of the same period, show almost as good a 
gift of observation and expression as his published work of five 
or six years later. Less promising and less personal are a series 
of six papers which he contributed in 1871 to the 'Edinburgh 
University Magazine,' a short-lived periodical started by him in 
conjunction with one or two college friends and fellow-members 
of the Speculative Society. 

With high social spirits and a brilliant, somewhat fantastic, 
gaiety of bearing, Stevenson was no stranger to the storms and 
perplexities of youth. A restless and inquiring conscience, per- 
haps inherited from covenanting ancestors, kept him inwardly 
calling in question the grounds of conduct and the accepted codes 
of society. At the same time his reading had shaken his belief 
in Christian dogma; the harsher forms of Scottish Calvinistic 
Christianity being indeed at all times repugnant to his nature. 
From the last circumstance arose for a time troubles with his 
father, the more trying while they lasted because of the deep at- 
tachment and pride in each other which always subsisted between 
father and son. He loved the aspects of his native city, but neither 
its physical nor its social atmosphere was congenial to him. Amid 
the biting winds and rigid social conventions of Edinburgh he 
craved for Bohemian freedom and the joy of life, and for a while 
seemed in danger of a fate like that of the boy-poet, Robert Fergus- 
son, with whom he always owned a strong sense of spiritual affinity. 

But his innate sanity of mind and disposition prevailed. In the 
summer of 1873 he made new friends, who encouraged him strongly 
to the career of letters. His first contribution to regular periodical 
literature, a little paper on 'Roads,' appeared in the 'Portfolio' 
(edited by Philip Gilbert Hamerton) for December 1873. In the 
meantime his health had suffered a serious breakdown. In conse- 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 627 

quence of acute nervous exhaustion, combined with threatening 
lung symptoms, he was ordered to the J^iviera, where he spent 
(chiefly at Mentone) the winter of 1873-4. Returning with a cer- 
tain measure of recovered health in April 1874, he went to live 
with his parents at Edinburgh and Swanston, and resumed his 
reading for the bar. He attended classes for Scots law and con- 
veyancing, and for constitutional law and history. He worked 
also for a time in the office of Messrs. Skene, Edwards, & Bilton, 
of which the antiquary and historian, William Forbes Skene was 
senior partner. On 14 July 1875 he passed his final examination 
with credit, and was called to the bar on the i6th, but never prac- 
tised. Since abandoning the engineering profession he had re- 
sumed the habit of frequent miscellaneous excursions in Scotland, 
England, or abroad. Now, in 1875, began the first of a series of 
visits to the artistic settlements in the neighbourhood of Fontaine- 
bleau, where his cousin, Mr. R. A. M. Stevenson, was for the time 
established. He found the forest climate restorative to his health, 
and the life and company of Barbizon and the other student re- 
sorts congenial. In the winter of 1874-5 he made in Edinburgh 
the acquaintance of Mr. W. E. Henley, which quickly ripened into 
a close and stimulating literary friendship. In London he avoided 
all formal and dress-coated society; and at the Savile Club (his 
favourite haunt) and elsewhere his own Bohemian oddities of dress 
and appearance would sometimes repel at first sight persons to 
whom on acquaintance he soon became endeared by the charm of 
his conversation. Among his friends of these years may be espe- 
cially mentioned Mr. Leshe Stephen, Mr. James Payn, Dr. Apple- 
ton (editor of the 'Academy'), Professor Clifford, Mr. Walter Pol- 
lock, Mr. Cosmo Monkhouse, Mr. Andrew Lang, and Mr. Edmund 
Gosse. In 1876 he went with Sir Walter Simpson on the canoe 
tour in Belgium and France described in the 'Inland Voyage.' 
In the spring of 1878 he made friends at Burford Bridge with 
a senior whom he had long honoured, Mr. George Meredith; 
and in the summer had a new experience in serving as secretary 
to Professor Fleeming Jenkin in his capacity of juror on the Paris 
Exhibition. In the autumn of the same year he spent a month at 
Monastier in Velay, whence he took the walk through the moun- 
tains to Florae narrated in the 'Travels with a Donkey in the 
Cevennes.' 



628 SIDNEY COLVIN 

During these years, 1874-8, his health, though frail, was pass- 
able. With his vagrant way of life he combined a steady and grow- 
ing hterary industry. While reading for the bar in 1874-5, much 
of his work was merely experimental (poems, prose-poems, and 
tales not published) . Much also was in preparation for proposed 
undertakings on Scottish history. His studies in Highland history, 
which were diligent and exact, in the end only served to provide 
the historical background of his Scottish romances. Until the 
end of 1875 he had only published, in addition to essays in the 
magazines, an 'Appeal to the Church of Scotland,' written to 
please his father and published as a pamphlet in 1875. In 1876 
he contributed as a journahst, but not frequently, to the ' Academy' 
and 'Vanity Fair,' and in 1877 more abundantly to 'London,' 
a weekly review newly founded under the editorship of Mr. Glas- 
gow Brown, an acquaintance of Edinburgh Speculative days. In 
the former year, 1876, began the brilliant series of essays on life 
and literature in the ' Cornhill Magazine ' which were afterwards 
collected with others in the volumes called severally 'Virginibus 
Puerisque' and ' Familiar Studies of Men and Books.' They were 
continued in 1877, and in greater number throughout 1878. His 
first published stories were: 'A Lodging for the Night' (Temple 
Bar, October 1877) ; ' The Sire de Maletroit's Door' {Temple Bar, 
January 1878); and 'Will o' the Mill' {Cornhill Magazine, 
January 1878). 

The year 1878 was to Stevenson one of great productiveness. 
In May was issued his first book, ' The Inland Voyage,' containing 
the account of his canoe trip, and written in a pleasant fanciful 
vein of humour and reflection, but with the style a little over- 
mannered. Besides six or eight characteristic essays of the 
' Virginibus Puerisque ' series, there appeared in ' London ' (edited 
by Mr. Henley) the set of fantastic modern tales called the. ' New 
Arabian Nights,' conceived in a very spirited and entertaining 
vein of the realistic-unreal, as well as the story of ' Providence and 
the Guitar;' and in the 'Portfolio' the 'Picturesque Notes on 
Edinburgh,' republished at the end of the year in book form. 
During the autumn and winter of this year he wrote ' Travels with 
a Donkey in the Cevennes,' and was much engaged in the planning 
of plays in collaboration with Mr. Henley, of which one, ' Deacon 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 629 

Brodie,' was finished in the spring of 1879. This was also the date 
of the essay ' On some Aspects of Burns.' In the same spring he 
drafted in Edinburgh, but afterwards laid by, four chapters on 
ethics (a study to which he once referred as being always his 
'veiled mistress') under the name of 'Lay Morals.' In few men 
have the faculties been so active on the artistic and the ethical sides 
at once, and this fragment is of especial interest in the study of its 
author's mind and character. 

By his various published writings Stevenson had made little 
impression as yet on the general reader. But the critical had 
recognised in him a new artist of the first promise in EngHsh letters, 
who aimed at, and often achieved, those qualities of sustained 
precision, lucidity, and grace of style which are characteristic of 
the best French prose, but in English rare in the extreme. He had 
known how to stamp all he wrote with the impress of a vivid 
personal charm ; had shown himself a master of the apt and ani- 
mated phrase ; and whether in tale or parable, essay or wayside 
musing, had touched on vital points of experience and feeling 
with the observation and insight of a true poet and humourist. 

The year 1879 was a critical one in Stevenson's life. In France 
he had met an American lady, Mrs. Osbourne (nee Van de Grift), 
whose domestic circumstances were not fortunate, and who was 
living with her daughter and young son in the art-student circles of 
Paris and Fontainebleau. At the beginning of 1879 she returned 
to California. In June Stevenson determined to follow. He 
travelled by emigrant ship and train, partly for economy, partly 
for the sake of the experience. The journey and its discomforts 
proved disastrous to his health, but did not interrupt his industry. 
Left entirely to his own resources, he stayed for eight months 
partly at Monterey and partly at San Francisco. During a part of 
these months he was at death's door from a complication of pleurisy, 
malarial fever, and exhaustion of the system, but managed never- 
theless to write the story of 'The PaviKon on the Links,' two or 
three essays for the 'Cornhill Magazine,' the greater part of a 
Calif ornian story, 'A Vendetta in the West' (never published), 
a first draft of the romance of ' Prince Otto,' and the two parts of 
the 'Amateur Emigrant' (not pubHshed till some years later). 
He also tried to get work on the local press, and some contributions 



630 SIDNEY COLVIN 

were printed in the ' Monterey Independent ; ' but on the whole his 
style was not thought up to California standards. In the spring of 
1880 he was married to Mrs. Osbourne, who had obtained some 
months before a divorce from her husband. She nursed him 
through the worst of his illness, and in May they went for the sake 
of health to lodge at a deserted mining station above Calistoga, in 
the California coast range. The story of this sojourn is told in 
the ' Silverado Squatters.' 

Family and friends, who had at first opposed the marriage, 
being now fully reconciled to it, Stevenson brought his wife home 
in August 1880. She was to him a perfect companion, taking part 
keenly and critically in his work, sharing all his gipsy tastes and 
love of primitive and natural modes of life, and being, in spite of 
her own precarious health, the most devoted and efficient of nurses 
in the anxious times which now ensued. For the next seven or 
eight years his life seemed to hang by a thread. Chronic lung 
disease had declared itself, and the slightest exposure or exertion 
was apt to bring on a prostrating attack of cough, haemorrhage, and 
fever. The trial was manfully borne; and in every interval of 
respite he worked in unremitting pursuit of the standards he had 
set before himself. 

Between 1880 and 1887 he lived the life of an invalid, vainly 
seeking relief by change of place. After spending six weeks 
(August and September 1880) with his parents at Blair Athol 
and Strathpeffer, he went in October, with his wife and stepson, 
to winter at Davos, where he made fast friends with John Adding- 
ton Symonds (1840-93) and his family. He wrote little, but 
prepared for press the collected essays 'Virginibus Puerisque,' 
in which he preaches with captivating vigour and grace his gospel 
of youth, courage, and a contempt for the timidities and petty 
respectabilities of life. For the rest, he amused himself with 
verses playful and other, and with supplying humorous text and 
cuts ('Moral Emblems,' 'Not I,' &c.) for a little private press 
worked by his young stepson. Returning to Scotland at the end 
of May with health somewhat improved, he spent four months with 
his parents at Pitlochry and Braemar. At Pitlochry he wrote 
' Thrawn Janet ' and the chief part of ' The Merry Men,! two of the 
strongest short tales in Scottish literature, the one of Satanic 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 631 

possession, the other of a conscience and imagination haunted, to 
the overthrow of reason, by the terrors of the sea. At Braemar 
he began 'Treasure Island,' his father helping with suggestions 
and reminiscences from his own seafaring experiences. Ai the 
suggestion of Mr. A. H. Japp, the story was offered to, and ac- 
cepted by, the editor (Mr. Henderson) of a boys' periodical called 
'Young Folks.' In the meantime (August 188 1) Stevenson had 
been a candidate for the vacant chair of history and constitutional 
law at Edinburgh. In the light of such pubHc reputation as he yet 
possessed, the candidature must have seemed paradoxical; but it 
was encouraged by competent advisers, including the retiring pro- 
fessor. Dr. yEneas Mackay. It failed. Had it succeeded, his 
health would almost certainly have proved unequal to the work. 
A cold and wet season at Braemar did him much harm; and in 
October he was ordered to spend a second winter (1881-2) at Davos. 
He here finished the tale of 'Treasure Island,' began, on the 
suggestion of Mr. George Bentley, a life (never completed) of 
William Hazlitt, and prepared for press the collection of literary 
essays ' Familiar Studies of Men and Books.' 

In the summer of 1882 he again tried Scotland (Stobo Manse 
in Upper Tweedale, Lochearnhead, and Kingussie), and again 
with bad results for his health. As his wife was never well at 
Davos, they determined to winter in the south, and settled before 
Christmas in a cottage near Marseilles (Campagne Defli, St. 
Marcel) . Thence being presently driven by a fever epidemic, they 
moved in January 1883 to a chalet in a pleasant garden on a hiU 
behind Hyeres (Chalet la Solitude). Here Stevenson enjoyed a 
respite of nearly a year from acute illness, as well as the first breath 
of popular success on the publication in book form of ' Treasure 
Island.' In this story the force of invention and vividness of 
narrative appealed to every reader, including those on whom its 
other quahties of style and character-drawing would in themselves 
have been thrown away ; and it has taken its place in Uterature as a 
classic story of pirate and mutineer adventure. It has been trans- 
lated into French, Spanish, and other languages. Partly at Mar- 
seilles and partly at Hyeres he wrote the 'Treasure of Franchard,' 
a pleasant and ingenious tale of French provincial life ; and early 
in 1883 completed for 'Young Folks' a second boys' tale, 'The 



632 SIDNEY COLVIN 

Black Arrow.' This story of the wars of the Roses, written in a 
style founded on the 'Paston Letters,' was preferred to 'Treasure 
Island ' by the audience to whom it was first addressed, but failed 
to please the critics when published in book form five years later, 
and was no favourite with its author. Stevenson's other work at 
Hyeres consisted of verses for the ' Child's Garden ; ' essays for the 
'Cornhill Magazine' and the 'Magazine of Art' (edited by Mr. 
Henley); the 'Silverado Squatters,' first drafted in 1880, and 
finally 'Prince Otto.' In this tale of fantasy, certain problems of 
character and conjugal relation which had occupied him ever 
since his boyish tragedy of 'Semiramis' are worked out with a 
lively play of intellect and humour, and (as some think) an exces- 
sive refinement and research of style, on a stage of German court 
life and with a delightful background of German forest scenery. 
The book, never very popular, is one of those most characteristic of 
his mind. It was translated into French in 1896 by Mr. Egerton 
Castle. 

In September 1883 Stevenson suffered a great loss in the death 
of his old friend Mr. James Walter Ferrier (see the essay Old 
Mortality). In the beginning of 1884 his hopes and spirits were 
rudely dashed by two dangerous attacks of illness, the first occur- 
ring at Nice in January, the second at Hyeres in May. Travelling 
slowly homewards by way of Royat, he arrived in England in 
July in an almost prostrate condition, and in September settled 
at Bournemouth. In the autumn and early winter his quarters 
were at Bonallie Tower, Branksome Park; in February 1885 his 
father bought and gave him the house at Westbourne which he 
called (after the famous lighthouse designed by his uncle Alan) 
Skerryvore. This was for the next two years and a half his home. 
His health, and on the whole his spirits, remained on a lower plane 
than before, and he was never free for many weeks together from 
fits of haemorrhage and prostration. Nevertheless he was able 
to form new friendships and to do some of the best work of his life. 

In 1885 he finished for pubhcation two books which his illness 
had interrupted, the 'Child's Garden of Verses' and 'Prince 
Otto,' and began a highway romance called 'The Great North 
Road,' but relinquished it in order to write a second series of ' New 
Arabian Nights.' These new tales hinge about the Fenian dyna- 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 633 

mite conspiracies, of which the public mind was at this time full, 
and to the old elements of fantastic realism add a new element of 
witty and scornful criminal psychology. The incidental stories of 
'The Destroying Angel' and 'The Fair Cuban' were supplied by 
Mrs. Stevenson. During the same period he wrote several of the 
personal and literary essays afterwards collected in the volume 
'Memories and Portraits;' a succession of Christmas stories, 
'The Body Snatcher' in the 'Pall Mall Gazette,' 1884; ' Olalla' in 
the ' Court and Society Review,' and ' The Misadventures of John 
Nicholson' in 'Cassell's Christmas Annual,' both for 1885; 
and 'Markheim' in 'Unwin's Christmas Annual,' 1886; as well 
as several plays in collaboration with Mr. Henley, viz. 'Beau 
Austin,' ' Admiral Guinea,' and ' Robert Macaire.' Stevenson, like 
almost every other imaginative writer, had built hopes of gain 
upon dramatic work. His money needs, in spite of help from his 
father, were still somewhat pressing. Until 1886 he had never 
earned much more than 300/. a year by his pen. But in that year 
came two successes which greatly increased his reputation, and 
with it his power to earn. These were ' The Strange Case of Dr. 
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' and 'Kidnapped.' The former, founded 
partly on a dream, is a striking apologue of the double life of man. 
Published as a ' shilling shocker,' a form at that time in fashion, it 
became instantly popular ; was quoted from a thousand pulpits ; 
was translated into German, French, and Danish ; and the names 
of its two chief characters have passed into the common stock of 
proverbial allusion.. In 'Kidnapped' — a boys' highland story 
suggested by the historical incident of the Appin murder — the 
adventures are scarcely less exciting than those of 'Treasure 
Island,' the elements of character-drawing subtler and farther 
carried, while the romance of history, and the sentiment of the 
soil are expressed as they had hardly been expressed since Scott. 
The success of these two tales, both with the critics and the public, 
estabhshed Stevenson's position at the head of the younger 
English writers of his day, among whom his example encouraged 
an increased general attention to technical qualities of style and 
workmanship, as well as a reaction in favour of the novel of action 
and romance against the more analytic and less stimulating types 
of fiction then prevailing. / 



634 SIDNEY COLVIN 

About this time Stevenson was occupied with studies for a short 
book on Wellington (after Gordon his favourite hero), intended 
for a series edited by Mr. Andrew Lang. This was never written, 
and in the winter and spring of 1886-7 his chief task was one of 
piety to a friend, viz. the writing of a Hfe of Fleeming Jenkin from 
materials supplied by the widow. In the spring of 1887 he pub- 
lished, under the title ' Underwoods' (borrowed from Ben Jonson), 
a collection of verses, partly EngHsh and partly Scottish, selected 
from the chance production of a good many years. Stevenson's 
poetry, written chiefly when he was too tired to write anything else, 
expresses as a rule the charm and power of his nature with a more 
slippered grace, a far less studious and perfect art, than his prose. 
He also prepared for publication in 1887, under the title ' Memories 
and Portraits,' a collection of essays personal and other, including 
an effective exposition of his own theories of romance, which he had 
contributed to various periodicals during preceding years. 

His father's death in May 1887 broke the strongest tie which 
bound him to this country. His own health showed no signs 
of improvement ; and the doctors, as a last chance of recovery, 
recommended some complete change of climate and mode of life. 
His wife's connections pointing to the west, he thought of Colorado, 
persuaded his mother to join them, and with his whole household — 
mother, wife, and stepson — sailed for New York on 17 Aug. 1887. 
After a short stay under the hospitable care of friends at Newport, 
he was persuaded, instead of going farther west, to try the climate 
of the Adirondack mountains for the winter. At the beginning of 
October the family moved accordingly to a house on Saranac Lake, 
and remained there until April 1888. Here he wrote for'Scrib- 
ner's Magazine' a series of twelve essays (published January- 
December 1888 and partly reprinted in 'Across the Plains'). 
Some of these (' Dreams,' ' Lantern Bearers,' ' Random Memories ') 
contain his best work in the mixed vein of autobiography and 
criticism; others ('Pulvis et Umbra,' 'A Christmas Sermon') his 
strongest, if not his most buoyant or inspiriting, in the ethical vein. 
For the same publishers he also wrote the ballad of ' Ticondero^a ' 
and began the romance of 'The Master of Ballantrae,' of which 
the scene is partly laid in the country of his winter sojourn. This 
tragic story of fraternal hate is thought by many to take the first 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 635 

place among its author's romances, alike by vividness of present- 
ment and by psychologic insight. In April Stevenson came to 
New York, but, soon wearying of the city, went for some weeks' 
boating to Manasquan on the New Jersey coast. At this time 
(March-May 1888), by way of ' a little judicious levity,' he revised 
and partly rewrote a farcical story drafted in the winter by his 
stepson, Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, 'The Wrong Box,' which was pub- 
lished in the course of the year under their joint names. The fact 
that the farce turns on the misadventures of a corpse caused most 
readers to think the levity more apparent than the judgment; 
but the book cannot be read without laughter. 

In the meantime the family had entertained the idea of a 
yachting excursion in the South Seas. The romance of the Pacific 
had attracted Stevenson from a boy. The enterprise held out 
hopes of relief to his health; an American publisher (Mr. S. S. 
McClure) provided the means of undertaking it by an offer of 
2,000/. for letters in which its course should be narrated. The 
result was that on 26 June 1888 the whole family set out from 
San Francisco on board the schooner yacht Casco (Captain 
Otis) . They first sailed to the Marquesas, where they spent six 
weeks; thence to the Paumotus or Dangerous Archipelago; 
thence to the Tahitian group, where they again rested for several 
weeks, and whence they sailed northward for Hawaii. Arriving 
at Honolulu about the new year of 1889, they made a stay of 
nearly six months, during which Stevenson made several excur- 
sions, including one, which profoundly impressed him, to the 
leper settlement at Molokai. His journey so far having proved 
a source of infinite interest and enjoyment, as well as greatly im- 
proved health, Stevenson determined to prolong it. He and his 
party started afresh from Honolulu in June 1889 on a rough 
trading schooner, the Equator. Their destination was the 
Gilberts, a remote coral group in the western Pacific. At two of 
its petty capitals, Apemama and Butaritari, they made stays of 
about six weeks each, and at Christmas 1889 found their way 
again into semi-civilization at Apia in the Samoan group. After 
a month or two's stay in Sam.oa, where the beauty of the scenery 
and the charm of the native population delighted them, the party 
went on to Sydney, where Stevenson immediately fell ill, the life 



636 SIDNEY COLVIN 

of the city seeming to undo the good he had got at sea. This 
experience set him voyaging again, and determined him to make 
his home in the South Seas. In April i8ia^^ fresh start was 
made, this time on a trading steamer, the Jai x^icoU. Touching 
first at Samoa, where he had bought a property of about four hun- 
dred acres on the mountain above Apia, to which he gave the name 
Vailima (five rivers), he left instructions for clearing and building 
operations to be begun while he continued his voyage. The course 
of the Janet NicoU took him during the summer to many remote 
islands, from Penhryn to the Marshalls, and landed him in Septem- 
ber in New Caledonia. Returning the same month to Samoa, he 
found the small house already existing at Vailima to be roughly 
habitable, and installed himself there to superintend the further 
operations of clearing, planting, and building. The family be- 
longings from Bournemouth were sent out, and his mother, who 
had left him at Honolulu, rejoined him at VaiHma in the spring of 
1891. 

During these Pacific voyages he had finished the 'Master of 
Ballantrae,' besides writing many occasional verses, and two long, 
not very effective, ballads on themes of Polynesian legend, the ' Song 
of Rahero' and the ' Feast of Famine.' He had also planned and 
begun at sea, in collaboration with Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, his one 
attempt at a long and sustained story of modern life, ' The Wrecker.' 
At Samoa he had written the first of his Pacific stories in prose, 
' The Bottle Imp.' This little tale of morals and of magic appealed 
strongly to the native readers to whom (in a missionary translation) 
it was first addressed (pubUshed in EngUsh in 'Black and White,' 
1891, and reprinted in 'Island Nights' Entertainments'). At 
Sydney he had written in a heat of indignation, and pubHshed in 
pamphlet form, the striking ' Letter to Dr. Hyde' in vindication of 
the memory of Father Damien. Lastly, on board the Janet Nicoll, 
' under the most ungodly circumstances,' he had begun the work 
of composing the letters relating his travels, which were due under 
the original contract to the Messrs. McClure. This and 'The 
Wrecker' were the two tasks unfinished on his hands when he 
entered (November 1890) on the four years' residence at Vailima 
which forms the closing period of his life. 

In his new Samoan home Stevenson soon began to exercise a 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 637 

hospitality and an influence which increased with every year. 
Among the natives he was known by the name of Tusitala (teller 
of tales), and waL- ^r^^osed to be master of an inexhaustible store of 
wealth, perhaps ev^ d be the holder of the magic bottle of his own 
tale. He gathered about him a kind of feudal clan of servants and 
retainers, whom he ruled in a spirit of affectionate kindness tem- 
pered with firm justice; and presently got drawn, as a man so 
forward in action and so impatient of injustice could not fail to do, 
into the entanglements of local politics and government. In health 
he seemed to have become a new man. Frail in comparison with 
the strong, he was yet able to ride and boat with little restriction, and 
to take part freely in local festivities, both white and native. The 
chief interruptions were an occasional trip to Sydney or Auckland, 
from which he generally came back the worse. From the middle 
of 1891 to the spring of 1893 his intromissions in politics embroiled 
him more or less seriously with most of the white officials in the 
island, especially the chief justice, Mr. Cedercrantz, and the 
president of the council, Baron Senfft von Pilsach. The proceed- 
ings of these gentlemen were exposed by him in a series of striking 
letters to the 'Times,' and the three treaty powers (Germany, 
Great Britain, and the United States) ultimately decided to dispense 
with their services. At one period of the struggle he believed him- 
self threatened with deportation. Whether all his own steps on 
that petty but extremely complicated political scene were judicious 
is more than can be said ; but impartial witnesses agree that he had 
a considerable moderating influence with the natives, and that his 
efforts were all in the direction of peace and concord. 

His literary industry during these years was more strenuous 
than ever. His habit was to begin work at six in the morning or 
earlier, continue without interruption until the midday meal, and 
often to resume again until four or five in the afternoon. In addi- 
tion to his literary labours he kept up an active correspondence 
both with old friends and new acquaintances, especially with 
writers of the younger generation in England, who had been drawn 
to him either by admiration for his work or by his ever ready and 
generous recognition of their own. He had suffered for some time 
from scrivener's cramp, and in the last three years of his life was 
much helped by the affectionate services as amanuensis of his 



6^S SIDNEY COLVIN 

stepdaughter, Mrs. Strong, who had become a member of the 
household since 1889. In 1894 the plan devised by his business 
adviser and lifelong friend, Mr. Charles Baxter, of a limited 
edition de luxe of his collected works, under the title of the ' Edin- 
burgh Edition,' afforded him much pleasure, together with a pros- 
pect of considerable gain. This experiment, without precedent 
during the lifetime of an author, proved a great success, but Steven- 
son did not live long enough to enjoy the opportunity of rest 
which its results were calculated to bring him. 

Of his writings during the Samoan period, 'The Wrecker' 
was finished in collaboration with Mr. Lloyd Osboume in the 
winter 1890-1. Throughout 1891 he had a heavy task with the 
promised letters relating his Pacific voyages. Work undertaken to 
order seldom prospered with him, and these 'Letters,' having cost 
him more labour than anything he ever wrote, have less of his 
characteristic charm, despite the interest and strangeness of the 
matters of which they tell. They were published periodically 
in the New York ' Sun' and in ' Black and White,' and have been in 
part reprinted in the 'Edinburgh Edition.' A far more effective 
result of his South Sea experiences is the tale of the 'Beach of 
Falesa,' written in the same year and first published under the 
title ' Uma ' in the ' Illustrated London News ' (reprinted in ' Island 
Nights' Entertainments'). In 1892 he was much occupied with a 
task from which he could expect neither fame nor profit, but to 
which he was urged by a sense of duty and the hope of influencing 
the treaty powers in favour of what he thought a wiser policy in 
Samoa. This was the ' Footnote to History,' an account, composed 
with an intentional plainness of style, of the intricate local politics 
of the preceding years, including a description of the famous hurri- 
cane of 1888. The same spring (1892) he took up again, after six 
years, the unfinished history of David Balfour at the point where 
ill-health had compelled him to break it off in 'Kidnapped.' 
This sequel (published first in 'Atalanta' under the title 'David 
Balfour,' and then in book form as ' Catriona ') contains some of the 
author's best work, especially in the closing scenes at Leyden and 
Dunkerque. The comedy of the boy and girl passion has been 
hardly anywhere more glowingly or more delicately expressed. In 
the same year (1892) was published 'Across the Plains,' *a volume 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 639 

of collected essays, to which was prefixed the account of his emi- 
grant journey from New York to San Francisco, much revised 
and compressed from the original draft of 1879 ; and in the spring 
of 1893 'Island Nights' Entertainments,' containing with 'The 
Beach of Falesa,' and 'The Bottle Imp,' a new tale of magic, 
'The Isle of Voices,' first published in the 'National Observer.' 
In the same year (1892) Stevenson made beginnings on a 
great variety of new w^ork, some of it inspired by his Pacific 
experiences, and some by the memories and associations of 
Scotland, the power of which on his mind seemed only to be in- 
tensified by exile. To the former class belonged 'Sophia Scarlet,' 
a sentimental novel of planters' life in the South Seas, and ' The 
Ebb-Tide,' a darker story of South Sea crime and adventure, 
planned some time before under the title of the 'Pearl- Fisher' in 
collaboration with Mr. Lloyd Osboume. Of the latter class were 
' Heathercat,' a tale of covenanting times and of the Darien adven- 
ture ; ' The Young Chevalier,' an historical romance partly founded 
on facts supplied to him by Mr. Andrew Lang ; ' Weir of Hermis- 
ton,' a tragic story of the Scottish border, in which the chief charac- 
ter was founded on that of the famous judge Lord Braxfield; 
and 'A Family of Engineers,' being an account of the lives and 
work of his grandfather, uncles, and father. Some progress had 
been made with all these when a fit of influenza in January 1893 
diverted him to a lighter task, that of dictating (partly, when for- 
bidden to speak, in the deaf-and-dumb alphabet) a tale of manners 
and the road called ' St. Ives,' dealing with the escape from Edin- 
burgh Castle and subsequent adventures of a French prisoner of 
war in 18 14. Of these various writings, the ' Ebb-Tide' was alone 
completed; it was published in 'To-day,' November 1893 to 
January 1894, and in book form in September 1894. The family 
history was carried as far as the construction of the Bell Rock 
lighthouse. 'Sophia Scarlet,' 'Heathercat,' and the 'Young 
Chevalier' never got beyond a chapter or two each. 'St. Ives' 
had been brought to within a little of completion when the author, 
feeling himself getting out of vein with it, turned again to ' Weir of 
Hermiston.' This, so far as it goes, is his strongest work. The 
few chapters which he lived to complete, taken as separate blocks 
of narrative and character presentment, are of the highest imagina- 
tive and emotional power. 



•640 SIDNEY COLVIN 

Despite the habitual gaiety which Stevenson had continued to 
show before his family and friends, and his expressed confidence 
in his own improved health, there had not been wanting in his 
later correspondence from Vailima signs of inward despondency 
and distress. At moments, even, it is evident that he himself 
had presentiments that the end was near. It came in such a manner 
as he would himself have wished. On the afternoon of 4 Dec. 1894, 
he was talking gaily with his wife, when the sudden rupture of a 
blood-vessel in the brain laid him at her feet, and within two hours 
all was over. The next day he was buried on a romantic site of 
his own selection, whither it took the zealous toil of sixty natives 
to cut a path and carry him, on a peak of the forest-clad Mount 
Vaea. 

The romance of Stevenson's life and the attraction of his 
character procured for him a degree of fame and affection dispro- 
portionate to the numerical circulation of his works. In this point 
he was much outstripped by several of his contemporaries. But 
few writers have during their lifetime commanded so much ad- 
miration and regard from their fellow-craftsmen. To attain the 
mastery of an elastic and harmonious English prose, in which 
trite and inanimate elements should have no place, and which 
should be supple to all uses and alive in all its joints and members, 
was an aim which he pursued with ungrudging, even with heroic, 
toil. Not always, especially not at the beginning, but in by far the 
greater part of his mature work, the effect of labour and fastidious 
selection is lost in the felicity of the result. Energy of vision goes 
hand in hand with magic of presentment, and both words and 
things acquire new meaning and a new vitality .under his touch. 
Next to finish and brilliancy of execution, the most remarkable 
quality of his work is its variety. Without being the inventor 
of any new form or mode of literary art (unless, indeed, the 
verses of the 'Child's Garden' are to be accounted such), he 
handled with success and freshness nearly all the old forms — the 
moral, critical, and personal essay, travels sentimental and other, 
romances and short tales both historical and modern, parables 
and tales of mystery, boys' stories of adventure, drama, memoir, 
lyrical and meditative verse both English and Scottish. To some 
of these forms he gave quite new life: through all alike he ex- 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 641 

pressed vividly his own extremely personal way of seeing and being, 
his peculiar sense of nature and of romance. 

In personal appearance Stevenson was of good stature (about 
5 ft. 10 in.) and activity, but very slender, his leanness of body 
and limb (not of face) having been throughout life abnormal. 
The head was small ; the eyes dark hazel, very wide-set, intent, and 
beaming ; the face of a long oval shape ; the expression rich and 
animated. He had a free and picturesque play of gesture and a 
voice of full and manly fibre, in which his pulmonary weakness was 
not at all betrayed. The features are familiar from many photo- 
graphs and cuts. There exist also two small full-length portraits 
by Mr. John S. Sargent — one in the possession of the family, the 
other of Mr. Fairchild of Newport, U.S.A. ; an oil sketch, done in 
one sitting, by Sir W. B. Richmond, now in the National Portrait 
Gallery; a drawing from life, by an American artist, Mr. Alex- 
ander; a large medallion portrait in bronze, in some respects 
excellent, by Mr. A.*6t. Gaudens of New York; and a portrait 
painted in 1893 at Samoa by Signor Nerli, nowin private posses- 
sion in Scotland. 

His published writings, in book and pamphlet form, are as 
follows: I. 'The Pentland Rising, a Page of History, 1666' 
(pamphlet), 1866. 2. 'An Appeal to the Church of Scotland' 
(pamphlet), 1875. 3. 'An Inland Voyage,' 1878. 4. 'Picturesque 
Notes on Edinburgh,' 1879. 5. 'Travels with a Donkey in the 
Cevennes,' 1879. 6. ' Virginibus Puerisque,' 1881. 7. 'Familiar 
Studies of Men and Books,' 1882. 8. 'Treasure Island,' 1882. 
9. 'New Arabian Nights,' 1882. 10. 'The Silverado Squatters,' 
1883. II. 'Prince Otto,' 1885. 12. 'The Child's Garden of 
Verses,' 1885. 13. ' More New Arabian Nights : the Dynamiter,' 

1885. 14. 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,' 

1886. 15. 'Kidnapped,' 1886. 16. 'The Merry Men and other 
Tales,' 1886. 17. 'Underwoods,' 1887. 18. 'Memories and 
Portraits,' 1887. 19. 'Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin' (prefixed to 
'Papers of Fleeming Jenkin,' 2 vols.), 1887. 20. 'The Black 
Arrow,' 1888. 21. 'The Wrong Box' (in collaboration with Mr. 
Lloyd Osbourne), 1888. 22. 'The Master of Ballantrae,' 1889. 
23. 'Ballads,' 1890. 24. 'Father Damien: an Open Letter' 
(pamphlet), 1890. 25. 'The Wrecker' (in collaboration with 

2T 



642 SIDNEY COLVIN 

Mr. Lloyd Osbourne), 1892. 26. 'Across the Plains,' 1892. 
27. 'A Footnote to History,' 1893. 28. ' Island Nights' Entertain- 
ments,' 1893. 29. ' Catriona' (being the sequel to ' Kidnapped'), 
1893. 30. 'The Ebb-Tide' (in collaboration with Mr. Lloyd 
Osbourne), 1894. The above were published during his lifetime; 
the following have appeared posthumously : 31. ' Vailima Letters,' 
1895. 32. 'Fables' (appended to a new edition of 'Jekyll and 
Hyde'), 1896. 2)Z- 'Weir of Hermiston,' 1896. 34. 'Songs of 
Travel,' 1896. 35. 'St. Ives,' with the final chapters supplied by 
Mr. A. T. Quiller Couch, 1897. All the above have been re- 
printed in the limited 'Edinburgh Edition,' which also contains 
the 'Amateur Emigrant,' entire for the first time (the title-paper 
of No. 26, 'Across the Plains,' was the second part of this) ; the 
unfinished 'Family of Engineers,' which has not been printed 
elsewhere ; the ' Story of a Lie,' the ' Misadventures of John Nichol- 
son ; ' and the fragmentary romance, ' The Great North Road ' — 
all here reprinted from periodicals for the first time ; the ' South 
Sea Letters,' not elsewhere reprinted; as well as 'The Pentland 
Rising,' 'A Letter to the Church of Scotland,' the 'Edinburgh 
University Magazine Essays,' ' Lay Morals,' ' Prayers written for 
Family Use at Vailima,' and a number of other papers and frag- 
ments, early and late, which have not been collected elsewhere. 
The edition is in twenty-seven volumes, of which the first series of 
twenty appeared 15 Nov. 1894-15 June 1896, and the supple- 
mentary series of seven December 1896-February 1898. 



